Eschewing the "great man" theory of history, Tolstoy shows how events are determined by large numbers of people whose actions coalesce at any moment in history to determine the course of events. Arguing that the closer people are to a situation the more they believe they have exercised free will, and the farther away people are from that situation the more they realize that their actions were already determined by past events, Tolstoy demonstrates...

From “one of the greatest Russian writers . . . perhaps the best novel about the generational divide between parents and children” (Russia Beyond).
 
This iconic Russian work of domestic fiction is thought to be the greatest literary achievement of nineteenth-century poet, playwright, and novelist Ivan Turgenev. Fathers and Sons shocked and divided readers when it was first published...

Dostoyevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880) is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoyevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence...