The Cossacks
By: Leo Tolstoy ; a new translation by Peter Constantine ; introduction by Cynthia Ozick.
Contributors: Constantine, Peter, 1963-
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 2004
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 161
Description: "This 1862 novel, in a new translation by Peter Constantine, is Tolstoy's semiautobiographical story of young Olenin, a wealthy, disaffected Muscovite who joins the Russian army and travels to the untamed frontier of the Caucasus in search of a more authentic life. Quartered with his regiment in a Cossack village, Olenin revels in the glories of nature and the rough strength of the Cossacks and Chechens. Smitten by his unrequited love for a local girl, Maryanka, Olenin has a profound but ultimately short-lived spiritual awakening. Try as he may to assimilate, he remains an awkward outsider and his long search for a more enlightened and purposeful existence comes to naught."--BOOK JACKET.