The Cossacks

Based on the most tumultuous period in the life of Hadji Murad, a real Caucasean fighter, Hadji Murad is a taut, tragic novella about loyalty, betrayal, and the solitude of a man too large for the causes which tried to claim him. After a feud with his commander, Imam Shamil, Murad crosses to the Russians where he is courted, watched, and finally confined as a suspected spy. When news arrives that his wife and son have been taken hostages by Shamil, he risks everything on a desperate break for the mountains to free his family. Published posthumously in 1912, Hadji Murad is Tolstoy's late masterpiece which lays bare the cynicism of empire, the fissures within insurgency, and the solitary integrity of a fighter who refuses to be used.