Tolstoy Bilingual
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Meet the Tolstoy you never knew! This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious.
From Farfaronov's Mountain to Alyosha the Pot, with a bit of War and Peace and Anna Karenina stuffed in the middle, this is a wonderful sampling of the master's works. There are also chapters on "Tolstoy the Didact" (showing how he tried to use literature to teach), and "Tolstoy the Outrageous" (where some of his more controversial ideas are examined). Finally, we have selected one passage from Anna Karenina and compared how it was translated differently over the past century.
Best of all, the entire volume is presented in English and [accented] Russian side by side. Ideal for a student wanting to improve her Russian and get acquainted with the full breadth of Tolstoy's work and style.
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian author of novels, short stories, novellas, plays, and philosophical essays. He was born into an aristocratic family and served as an officer in the Russian military during the Crimean War before embarking on a career as a writer and activist. Tolstoy’s experience in war, combined with his interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, led him to devote his life and work to the cause of pacifism. In addition to such fictional works as War and Peace (1869), Anna Karenina (1877), and The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Tolstoy wrote The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893), a philosophical treatise on nonviolent resistance which had a profound impact on Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He is regarded today not only as one of the greatest writers of all time, but as a gifted and passionate political figure and public intellectual whose work transcends Russian history and literature alike.
More by Leo Tolstoy
Lydia Razran Stone
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LYDIA RAZRAN STONE has translated and analyzed biomedical research for NASA, and edits SlavFile, the quarterly newsletter for Slavic translators. She has published three books of translated poetry, and has a forthcoming dictionary of English sports idioms. Her translation of Krylov's fairy tales, The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (and 61 other Russian fables by Ivan Krylov), was published by Russian Life Books in 2010. Her latest project involves English versions of the songs of Bulat Okudzhava.
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