Divine And Human

1. The Son Of A Thief
2. The Repentant Sinner
3. The Archangel Gabriel
4. The Prayer
5. The Poor People
6. A Coffeehouse In The City Of Surat
7. Kornei Vasiliev
8. A Grain of Rye The Size Of A Chicken Egg
9. The Berries
10. Stones
11. The Big Dipper
12. The Power Of Childhood
13. Why Did It Happen?
14. Divine And Human
15. The Requirements Of Love
16. Sisters

224 Pages

Additional Info
Divine and Human stands apart as both a landmark in literary history and master-piece of spiritual and ethical reflection. Suppressed in turn by the tsarist and Soviet regime, the tales contained in this book have, for the most part, never been published in English until now. Emerging at last, they offer western readers fresh glimpses of novelist and philosopher Leo Tolstoy. Divine and Human consists of choice selections from The Sunday Reading Stories, the second volume in a two-part work titled The Circle of Reading. In the words of translator Peter Sekirin, “Tolstoy considered The Circle of Reading to be the major work of his life. Considering its difficult history, it is not surprising that only recently has it been rediscovered.” From its sparkling vignettes to its lengthier stories, Divine and Human probes the complexities of life and faith. Its characters range the spectrum of human emotions and qualities, from hatred to love and joy to grief; from sublime nobility to grotesque self-absorption. Tolstoy’s world, though far-removed from today’s information age, becomes our world — indeed, has always been and always will be our world. Motor cars may have replaced horse-drawn cars, but human hearts remain the same, and questions of truth, mercy, forgiveness, devotion, justice, and the nature of God knock as insistently on the doors of our lives today as they did in Tolstoy’s time. Welcome, then, to Divine and Human: a buried treasure at last unearthed, and certain to be prized by Tolstoy readers and lovers of great literature.