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Tolstoy: Plays, Volume II offers two long plays written during the years 1886-1889. The Realm of Darkness is Tolstoy's best-known play, a treatment of moral issues within a community of Russian peasants. The lesser known The Fruits of Enlightenment, a comic portrait of an upper-class Russian family afflicted with various social diseases, was written to be performed for Tolstoy's family, and not intended for publication. Andrew Baruch Wachtel has added an informative introduction on this aspect of Tolstoy's art.
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.
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