Cover: Portrait of Leo Tolstoy (1908) by V. G. Chertkov · Wikimedia Commons; full portrait retained, EXIF orientation normalized, downsized and padded; separate title/author overlay. · Public domain
The Avar chieftain Hadji Murat quarrels with the imam Shamil and defects to the Russians, hoping to rescue his family, and finds the court of Nicholas I no kinder. Tolstoy's last novel, written in his seventies, is a clear-eyed picture of empire and of a proud man caught between two powers.
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