The Kreutzer Sonata and Other StoriesThe Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories

"In these four stories, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) depicts desire in its different manifestations -- from idealistic romance to sexual jealousy, from desperate lust to relentless longing. Family Happiness, an early work, portrays the struggles of a couple as they move from courtship and passion through disiullusionment to the quieter stage of married love. A passenger tells a bitter tale of sex, suspicion and murder when strangers on a train discuss the nature of love in The Kreutzer Sonata, a novella banned for its scandalous content in 1890. In The Devil, a young man find it impossible to resist a beautiful peasant woman with whom he had an affair before his marriage, while Father Sergius shows a man going to increasingly desperate ends -- from soldier to monk, to hermit to beggar -- in order to avoid the temptations of the flesh."--Back cover.