Cossacks and other stories. Leo Tolstoy. 2006.

In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy travelled to the Caucasus and joined the army there as a cadet. The four years that followed  were among the most significant in his life, and provided the material for the stories collected here. Begun in 1852 but unfinished for a decade, The Cossacks describes the experiences of Olenin, a young cultured Russian who comes to despise civilisation after spending time with the wild Cossack people. Sevastopol Sketches, based on Tolstoy’s own experiences of the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-5, is a compelling description and consideration of the nature of war. In Hadji Murat, written towards the end of his life, Tolstoy returns to the Caucasus of his youth and portrays the fate of a great leader, torn apart and destroyed by a conflict of loyalties: it is among the greatest of his shorter works.