Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, perhaps the most famous Russian writer in the world, is an unrivaled prose writer who, in the words of Vladimir Nabokov, discovered 'a method of depicting life that most accurately corresponds to our conception of it. He is the only writer I know whose clock neither lags behind nor overtakes the countless hours of his readers... Tolstoy's prose flows in time with our pulse, his characters move at the same pace as the passersby beneath our windows while we sit poring over a book.' This collection of short stories by Leo Tolstoy is presented to our readers, each an unquestionable masterpiece that exerted an unparalleled influence not only on Russian but also on international culture in the 20th century.