Banned in Russia, this book was deemed a threat to church and state. The culmination of a lifetime's thought, it espouses a commitment to Jesus's message of turning the other cheek. In a bold and original manner, Tolstoy shows his readers clearly why they must reject violence of any sort - even that sanctioned by the state or the church - and urges them to look within themselves to find the answers to questions of morality.

The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's crowning achievement, is a tale of patricide & family rivalry that embodies the moral & spiritual dissolution of an entire society (Russia in the 1870s). It created a national furor comparable only to the excitement stirred by the publication, in 1866, of Crime & Punishment. To Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov captured the quintessence of Russian character in all its exaltation, compassion, & profligacy. Significantly,...

Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin’s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him. In her revision of the Garnett translation,...

The Kingdom Of God Is Within You is one of the most provocative anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian pieces of literature ever written. In the context of a sincere and scathing account of what is living and dead in modern Christianity, Tolstoy presents a view of history and society that overcomes widely recognized theoretical contradictions implicit in his monumental early novel, War and Peace. At the focal point of The Kingdom Of God Is Within...