Hadji Murat
€0,00
Written in the final years of his life and published posthumously in 1912, Hadji Murat is Leo Tolstoy's haunting novella of loyalty, power and resistance in the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century Russian conquest. Its central figure, Hadji Murat, is a celebrated Avar warrior who breaks with the Chechen leader Imam Shamil and seeks an uneasy alliance with the Russian forces, hoping to rescue his family from captivity. Caught between rival authorities, he becomes a man whose courage and independence cannot protect him from the competing ambitions of empires. Tolstoy moves between the camps of soldiers and rulers with a clear-eyed attention to the customs, calculations and private fears that shape the conflict.
Beneath its compact narrative, Hadji Murat is a profound indictment of imperial violence and the machinery of political power, exposing the human cost concealed by official language and military glory. Tolstoy portrays neither side as morally simple, but his sympathy rests with the individual caught in the path of forces far greater than himself. The novella's vivid landscapes, restrained prose and unsentimental treatment of courage make it one of his most concentrated achievements. Written by an author who had himself served in the Caucasus, it also draws upon his intimate knowledge of the region, offering a final, fiercely perceptive reckoning with war, domination and the irreducible dignity of human life.
From the book
“I remembered a story I had heard long ago.”
— Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat
On Hadji Murat
“One of the greatest novellas ever written.”
— Isaiah Berlin, on Hadji Murat