New York: Dover Publications, 2009. 146 pages, paperback. ISBN: 978-0-486-47366-6.The narrator prefaces the story with his comments on a crushed, but still living thistle he finds in a field (a symbol for the main character), after which and then begins to tell the story of Hadji Murad. Murad is a separatist guerilla who falls out with his own commander and eventually sides with the Russians in hope of saving his family. The theme of struggle while remaining faithful resonated with Tolstoy even though he was in ailing health; later letters suggest this work gave him a brief, final moment of vigor. Just as the author was struggling with his near death, his extended meditation on the concept of the individual refusing to give in to the demands of the world helped him to complete the book, although he himself had no inclination to publish it and was only concerned with its completion. In English.
