The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy Reviewed by Steve Rudd

The one way to be happy is to love, to love self-denyingly, to love everybody and everything. If you fancy a nice little slab of classic literature, then this beauty of a story might be for you. Set on the harsh Russian Steppes back in the nineteenth century, this simple-living yet stunningly captivating novel pre-dates Tolstoy's far more famous masterpiece in War And Peace. Leo, for those who might be interested, was born in 1828, eighty miles from Moscow... and during his extraordinary lifetime fathered no fewer than thirteen children!

I wonder how many people have actually read War And Peace (which took the best part of five years to pen and then publish) in its entirety, bearing in mind it's an epic tale in every respect. I wonder. How many people who claim to have read it have actually read every single word and related to where Tolstoy's characters were coming from?

The Cossacks is fascinating and thoroughly intriguing first and foremost for the awesome sense of time and place that is conveyed with such firm majesty. Such exquisite attention to detail is contained in the descriptions of the landscapes that when you're reading it you get the impression that you are really watching a movie because it is so simple to visualise the scene. In this sense, very little is left to one's own imagination, with Tolstoy's writing style resembling Ernest Hemingway's to a large extent. The people in the story, likewise, are well-developed and rounded characters who aren't afraid to show their true emotions when it counts. In this novel, a soldier by the name of Olenin comes to a small village where he stays for a short while. During his stay he falls hopelessly in love with one of the women living there by the name of Maryanka.

Unfortunately, she is set to marry one of the local men, and The Cossacks proceeds to chart the delicate relationships that Olenin forges in the village as he tries - but ultimately fails - to suppress his true feelings for her. Never does Tolstoy opt for sentimental fussiness via his writing, and the end is something of a sombre heart-breaking shock to the system that further ensures this novel is literally an unforgettable read of raw emotion-rousing proportions... (First published in 1863; this edition included in Everyman's Library in 1994)

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