A world and domestic classic, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was called "the head of Russian literature" during his lifetime and was nominated for the Nobel Prize four times. What are great writers like? It turns out, much like us. Lev Nikolaevich, for example, suffered from depression, which is considered a modern ailment, and treated it with kumis in a yurt near Samara… He also pondered difficult questions. Should one listen to the heart—or the mind? Follow society—or pursue one's own dream? How to fight one's vices: ambition, selfishness, and carnal passion? His heroes are the same. Those who love and those who fell out of love. Faithful and traitors. Those searching and those who have lost everything. Those just beginning their path and those who have crossed the line where "it was neither possible to forgive nor ask for forgiveness." The book includes novellas and stories ("The Kreutzer Sonata," "The Devil," "Father Sergius," and others), the play "The Living Corpse," and Tolstoy's "Confession."