The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories

Tolstoy knows that his readers have fallen in love and also, often, fallen out of it; they have wanted to kill their loved ones; they have lusted vigorously; or desperately sought the approval and even worship of others - Tolstoy depends on our own memories to entangle us in his tragic stories.

In these four stories, Tolstoy depicts desire in its different manifestations - from idealistic romance to sexual jealousy, from desperate lust to relentless longing. "Family Happiness", an early work, portrays the struggles of a couple as they move from courtship and passion through disillusionment to the quieter stage of married love. A passenger tells a bitter tale of sex, suspicion and murder when strangers on a train discuss the nature of love in "The Kruetzer Sonata", a novella banned for its scandalous content in 1890. In "The Devil", a young man finds it impossible to resist a beautiful peasant woman with whom he had an affair before his marriage, while "Father Sergius" shows a man going to increasingly desperate ends - from a soldier to monk, to hermit to beggar - in order to avoid the temptations of the flesh.

The translations by David McDuff and Paul Foote faithfully convey Tolstoy's candid, vigorous prose. This edition also includes a new introduction by Donna Orwin discussing Tolstoy's depiction of love and sex in these works, as well as a chronology, further reading and notes.