The Prisoner of the Caucasus

Leo Tolstoy, the "highest pride of Russia," the "unrivaled Russian prose writer," whose words the whole world listened to, every time he wrote about war, portrayed its two faces – the heroic, showing the courage of the Russian soldier, and the monstrous, inhuman. Before him, no one in world literature had yet told the truth about war so faithfully, with such terrifying real details, about how it maims people, killing them physically and spiritually. And is it possible not to agree with the writer: "It is one of two: either war is madness, or if people do this madness, then they are not rational creatures at all, as we are somehow accustomed to think"? In the works included in the book, Tolstoy tells with complete candor, without embellishment, about this unrighteous and terrible thing – war.