The Liberation of Tolstoy: A Tale of Two Writers

by Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Khmelkov (Introduction), Thomas Gaiton Marullo (Translation)

This first annotated translation of Ivan Bunin's The Liberation of Tolstoy is a timely accompaniment to the ongoing revival of the Russian writer, both in his homeland and the West. Written in 1937, more than two decades after Leo Tolstoy's death, The Liberation of Tolstoy --equal parts biography, memoir, and literary study--serves as a dialogue between two great writers on the proklyatye voprosy, or "damned questions," of life.

364 pages, Hardcover

First published April 18, 2001

About the author

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Russian: Иван Алексеевич Бунин) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was noted for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Russian traditions in the writing of prose and poetry. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is considered to be one of the richest in the language.

Best known for his short novels The Village (1910) and Dry Valley (1912), his autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1933, 1939), the book of short stories Dark Avenues (1946) and his 1917–1918 diary ( Cursed Days, 1926), Bunin was a revered figure among anti-communist White emigres, European critics, and many of his fellow writers, who viewed him as a true heir to the tradition of realism in Russian literature established by Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov.

He died November 8, 1953 in Paris.

Reviews

[Alejandro Orradre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un libro extraño -que quizás no he llegado a comprender- en el que Bunin explora la figura de un Tólstoi en su ocaso vital y en el que se mezclan características de ensayo con aportaciones personales del propio autor del libro.