These three stories of Tolstoy's maturity show him increasingly grappling with fundamental issues of religion and morality. In Master and Man he depicts an employer, bent on closing a business deal, traveling with his servant through the swirling snow - little realizing how soon he may have been to settle his accounts with his maker. Father Sergius portrays a priest tormented beyond endurance by the longings of his body, while Hadji Murat dramatizes the divided loyalties of a leading figure in Russia's struggle to subdue the Caucasus. With a compelling combination of moral seriousness and extraordinary sympathy and understanding, these stories reveal Tolstoy as a writer at the height of his creative powers.
Paul Foote's translation captures the powerful simplicity of Tolstoy's prose, and is accompanied by an introduction in which he discusses the place of these works in their author's oeuvre.
