Documents the spiritual crisis experienced by Russian author Leo Tolstoy in 1879, when at the age of fifty-one, and with two monumental works already published, he decided he had accomplished nothing of lasting value in his lifetime.
Contains the title story in which the life of a peaceful public official is permanently changed by a mysterious illness, and includes "Family Happiness," "The Kreutzer Sonata," and "Master and Man," also by the ninteenth-century Russian author.