Two compelling short works by the Russian master
 |
| Leo Tolstoy. Portrait: Gay Nikolay Nikolayevich (1884, The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) |
If
War and Peace is just too long for you,
The Guardian website's Nicholas Lezard offers an easier way to get acquainted with Tolstoy's work. He recommends two shorter tales:
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and
The Devil, recently published in a twin-edition by Oneworld. Lezard dramatically describes the first of these stories as 'probably his best-known work after
War and Peace – and with good reason. It is one of the most lacerating works of literature ever written, a hard, pitiless stare into the abyss, not just of death, but of human nature. It is one of those works that's essential: not because reading it means you can tick off a cultural milestone [...], but because without it you're missing part of the picture of what it means to be human'. Lezard goes on to wonder whether 'Beckett's
Malone Dies was written as a comic counterpoint to this work – light relief, as it were'. [
Read More]
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
