/lit/ - Literature

>>18664614
Hadji Murad - Leo Tolstoy

I love War and Peace, and especially Anna Karenina. And whilst the latter is perfect, especially in its characterization of evil (through Anna and Stiva). I can't help but feel Hadji Murad is his best work.

The chapter on Tsar Nicholas I might be the best in all fiction. Hadji Murad's spiritual dignity juxtaposed against the low quality of Shamil and Nicholas perfectly exemplifies what's wrong with social hierarchies, even today. The thousands of shallow, vain motivations of the characters and their effect on Murad's tragic end - all of these make for a special and unique book.

But above all, it's the sense that Tolstoy captures - the deterministic nature of events and the inherent tragedy in it. Tolstoy clearly sees time as open, but at the same time sees the millions of vain individual decisions of people leading to an almost deterministic end - one of suffering and evil. As if he's saying the individual can be good, but the world cannot.

Did anyone else have a strong reaction to this book?