“The daunting elements of classic literature that might discourage a timid reader become irrelevant, thanks to a skilled narrator…Wanda McCaddon makes this literary cornerstone downright enjoyable. It’s not that she turns herself into every character or offers over-the-top drama. Instead, it is her consistency and sensitivity to the author’s tone that make this a wonderful listen. Her familiarity with the text and understanding of its nuances illuminate the work, making what might have seemed lofty, absolutely lively.” —AudioFile
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- My Religion
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Huntington Smith
Read by Bob Souer
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Release Date: 6/07/16
Formats: Digital Audy
In My Religion, Leo Tolstoy accuses the church of hiding the true meaning of Jesus, which is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount and the call to resist evil. For Tolstoy, it is this command which has been most damaged by ecclesiastical interpretation.
Tolstoy had not always been possessed of the religious ideas set forth in My Religion. For thirty-five years of his life he was, in the proper acceptation of the word, a nihilist—a man who believed in nothing. But faith came to him; he believed in the doctrine of Jesus, and his life underwent a sudden transformation.
- My Religion
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Huntington Smith
Read by Bob Souer
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Release Date: 6/07/16
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Anna Karenina
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude
Read by Wanda McCaddon
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Release Date: 9/06/12
Formats: Digital Audy
Sensual, rebellious Anna falls deeply and passionately in love with the handsome Count Vronsky. When she refuses to conduct the discreet affair that her cold, ambitious husband—and Russian high society—would condone, she is doomed. Set against the tragic love of Anna and Vronsky, the plight of the melancholy nobleman Konstantine Levin unfolds. In doubt about the meaning of life—a mirror of Tolstoy's own spiritual crisis—Konstantine is haunted by thoughts of suicide. Through these and other characters, Tolstoy weaves a vast and rich tapestry of nineteenth-century Russian society.
A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution, Anna Karenina tells the story of two characters whose emotional instincts conflict with the dominant social mores of their time.
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- Anna Karenina
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude
Read by Wanda McCaddon
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Release Date: 9/06/12
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Kreutzer Sonata
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translator unknown
Read by Simon Prebble
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Release Date: 2/03/12
Formats: Digital Audy
One of the world’s greatest novelists, Leo Tolstoy was also the author of a number of superb short stories, one of his best-known being “The Kreutzer Sonata.” This macabre story involves the murder of a wife by her husband. It is a penetrating study of jealousy as well as a piercing complaint about the way in which society educates men and women in matters of sex—a serious condemnation of the mores and attitudes of the wealthy, educated class.
- The Kreutzer Sonata
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translator unknown
Read by Simon Prebble
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Release Date: 2/03/12
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Death of Ivan Ilyich
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Read by Simon Prebble
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Release Date: 7/18/11
Formats: Digital Audy
Hailed as one of the world’s masterpieces of psychological realism, The Death of Ivan Ilyich 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?
The first part of the story portrays Ivan Ilyich’s colleagues and family after he has died as they discuss the effect of his death on their careers and fortunes. In the second part, Tolstoy reveals the life of the man whose death seems so trivial. The perfect bureaucrat, Ilyich treasured his orderly domestic and office routine. Diagnosed with an incurable illness, he at first denies the truth but is influenced by the simple acceptance of his servant boy, and he comes to embrace the boy’s belief that death is natural and not shameful. He comforts himself with happy memories of childhood and gradually realizes that he has ignored all his inner yearnings as he tried to do what was expected of him.
Will Ilyich be able to come to terms with himself before his life ebbs away?
This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy’s own life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Read by Simon Prebble
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Release Date: 7/18/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- What Is Art?
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Aylmer Maude
Read by Geoffrey Blaisdell
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Release Date: 7/23/08
Formats: Digital Audy
What Is Art? is the result of fifteen years’ reflection on the nature and purpose of art.
Tolstoy claims that all good art is related to the authentic life of the broader community and that the aesthetic value of a work of art is not independent of its moral content. The book is noteworthy not only for its famous iconoclasm and compelling attacks on the aestheticist notion of “art for art’s sake” but even more for its wit, its lucid and beautiful prose, and its sincere expression of the deepest social conscience.
Tolstoy is an author critics typically rank alongside Shakespeare and Homer. A sustained consideration of the cultural import of art by someone who was himself an artist of the highest stature will always remain relevant and fascinating to anyone interested in the place of art and literature in society.
- What Is Art?
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Aylmer Maude
Read by Geoffrey Blaisdell
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Release Date: 7/23/08
Formats: Digital Audy
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- War and Peace
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Read by Frederick Davidson
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Release Date: 12/01/98
Formats: Digital Audy
Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once a historical war epic, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit.
Noted for its mastery of realistic detail and psychological analysis, War and Peace follows the metamorphosis of five aristocratic families against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Individual stories interweave as each of Tolstoy’s memorable characters seek fulfillment, fall in love, make mistakes, and become scarred by war in different ways.
Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual’s place in the historical process.
Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers: “To be played upon by the animal keenness of this eye, the sheer power of this creative attack, the entirely clear and true greatness…of this epic, is to find one’s way home…to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.”
- War and Peace
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By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Read by Frederick Davidson
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Release Date: 12/01/98
Formats: Digital Audy