Hadji Murad

Description

Hadji Murad

This book has been translated by Dar El Helal

This short novel, published posthumously, is the writer’s fictionalized account of his service in the Russian army in Chechnya in the 1850s and of a Chechen soldier, Hadji Murad, who defects to the enemy with tragic results.

Brutal and uncompromising, this remains a work of startling insight into an ethnic war that continues to this day.

In 1851 Leo Tolstoy enlisted in the Russian army and was sent to the Caucasus to help defeat the Chechens.

During this war a great Avar chieftain, Hadji Murád, broke with the Chechen leader Shamil and fled to the Russians for safety.

Months later, while attempting to rescue his family from Shamil’s prison, Hadji Murád was pursued by those he had betrayed and, after fighting the most heroic battle of his life, was killed.

Tolstoy, witness to many of the events leading to Hadji Murád’s death, set down this story with painstaking accuracy to preserve for future generations the horror, nobility, and destruction inherent in war.

Hadji Murad

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