While there are many courses and tutorials online, learning from a book is still one of the best ways to greatly improve your skills. Below I have selected top Tolstoy books.
1. War and Peace (Vintage Classics) (2008)
broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.A s Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and…
2. Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy (Perennial Classics) (2004)
The brilliant shorter novels of Tolstoy, including The Death of Ivan Ilych and Family Happiness, collected and reissued with a beautiful updated design. Of all Russian writers Leo Tolstoy is probably the best known to the Western world, largely because of War and Peace, his epic in prose, and Anna Karenina, one of the most splendid novels in any language. But during his long lifetime Tolstoy also wrote enough shorter works to fill many volumes. Here reprinted in one volume are his eight finest short novels, together with "Alyosha…
3. The Kingdom of God is Within You (2016)
“The Kingdom of God Is Within You” is Leo Tolstoy’s magnum opus of philosophy and religious thought. The book is cited by Mahatma Gandhi as one of the chief influences in the development of his philosophy of non-violence. Tolstoy takes the reader to the heart of the message of Jesus Christ, laying aside the common dogmas of the church in favor of a literal understanding of Christ’s teachings. This brings his philosophy to one of strict non-violence and a complete overhaul of the structures of modern society. The work is a masterpiece in the realm of Christianity….
4. Anna Karenina (Wonders of the World) (2002)
‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Acclaimed by many as the world’s greatest novel, Anna Kerenina provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. Anna is a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as a wife and turns to her lover Count Vronsky to fulfil her passionate nature -with tragic consequences….
5. A Confession and Other Religious Writings (Penguin Classics) (1988)
Tolstoy’s passionate and iconoclastic writings–on issues of faith, immortality, freedom, violence, and morality–reflect his intellectual search for truth and a religion firmly grounded in reality. The selection includes ‘A Confession,’ ‘Religion and Morality,’ ‘What Is Religion, and of What Does Its Essence Consist?,’ and ‘The Law of Love and the Law of Violence.’For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best…
6. Anna Karenina (Great illustrated classics: Titan editions) (1966)
Great Illustrated Classic from Leo Tolstoy…
7. The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Bantam Classics) (1981)
Hailed as one of the world’s supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy’s life, a nine-year period following the publication of during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A…
8. Anna Karenina (Modern Library Classics) (2000)
Considered by some to be the greatest novel ever written, Anna Karenina is Tolstoy’s classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of high society in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A rich and complex masterpiece, the novel charts the disastrous course of a love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer. Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together the lives of dozens of characters, and in doing so captures a breathtaking tapestry of late-nineteenth-century Russian society. As Matthew Arnold wrote in his celebrated essay on…
9. The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories (Vintage Classics) (2010)
A vibrant translation of Tolstoy’s most important short fiction by the award-winning translators of War and Peace. Here are eleven masterful stories from the mature author, some autobiographical, others moral parables, and all told with the evocative power that was Tolstoy’s alone. They include “The Prisoner of the Caucasus,” inspired by Tolstoy’s own experiences as a soldier in the Chechen War, “Hadji Murat,” the novella Harold Bloom called “the best story in the world,” “The Devil,” a fascinating tale of sexual obsession, and…
10. Resurrection (Penguin Classics) (2009)
Serving on the jury at a murder trial, Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov is devastated when he sees the prisoner – Katyusha, a young maid he seduced and abandoned years before. As Dmitri faces the consequences of his actions, he decides to give up his life of wealth and luxury to devote himself to rescuing Katyusha, even if it means following her into exile in Siberia. But can a man truly find redemption by saving another person? Tolstoy’s most controversial novel, Resurrection (1899) is a scathing indictment of injustice, corruption and hypocrisy at all levels of society. Creating a vast panorama of Russian life, from peasants to…
11. Anna Karenina (Wordsworth Classics) (1997)
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Introduction and Notes by E.B. Greenwood, University of Kent Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density. Tolstoy considered this book to be his first real attempt at a novel form, and it addresses the very nature of society at all levels,- of destiny, death, human relationships and the irreconcilable contradictions of existence. It ends tragically, and there is much that evokes despair, yet set beside this is an abounding joy…
Best Tolstoy Books That You Need
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Genesis and download some tolstoy books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor
Author(s): Vladimir Nabokov; Brian Boyd; Anastasia Tolstoy
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group, Year: 2019, Size: 10 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2437849
Leo Tolstoy and the Canadian Doukhobors: A Study in Historic Relationships. Expanded and Revised Edition
Author(s): Andrew Donskov
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press, Year: 2019, Size: 11 Mb, Download: pdf
ID: 2501052
Leo Tolstoy: A very short introduction
Author(s): Liza Knapp
Publisher: OUP Oxford, Year: 2019, Size: 1 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2526554
Think Write Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor
Author(s): Vladimir Nabokov; Brian Boyd; Anastasia Tolstoy
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Year: 2019, Size: 10 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2534699
Education and the Limits of Reason: Reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nabokov
Author(s): Peter Roberts and Herner Saeverot
Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2017, Size: 765 Kb, Download: pdf
ID: 2232348
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Author(s): Leo Tolstoy
Publisher: Centaur Classics, Year: 2016, Size: 162 Kb, Download: epub
ID: 2401015
Tolstoy's Diaries, Volume 1 (1847-1894)
Author(s): R. F. Christian
Publisher: Faber & Faber, Year: 2015,1969, Size: 1 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 1420152
The Ten Pound Plant: Grow marijuana with ten pound harvests off each plant
Author(s): Tolstoy, Peter Oscar
Publisher: , Year: 2015, Size: 1 Mb, Download: epub
ID: 2075955
Please note that this booklist is not errorless. Some books are really record-breakers according to The New York Times, others are composed by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant resources you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.