"I read The Cossacks and was carried away."Ivan Turgenev

Olenin, a young nobleman who is disenchanted with city life, finds himself caught up in the wild beauty
of the Caucasus and the simplicity of its people.

In the setting of what is present-day Kazakhstan, Tolstoy examines two psychological problems. The first
dilemma is that of a young man who desires both fulfilling love and a place as a respected member of
society. The other is the difficulty of a primitive society to accept domination by a higher culture that has no
understanding of the traditions it asks its colonists to cast aside.

One of Tolstoy's lesser-known novels, The Cossacks is one of the finest pictures of Cossack society
in all of Russian literature.

Count Lev (Leo) Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born in Russia in 1828. His parents, who died when he was young, were of noble birth. He served in the army in the Caucasus and Crimea, where he wrote his first stories. In 1862 he married and in 1869 produced the masterpiece War and Peace. He died in 1910 at age 82.