The Devil (The Art of the Novella series)

About this book

"I am acting badly " thought Yevgeny "But whats one to do? Anyhow it is not for long." Leo Tolstoy is known for epic novels that brilliantly dissect society but the novella The Devil may be the most personally revealingand startlingfiction he ever wrote. He thought it so scandalous in fact that he hid the manuscript in the upholstery of a chair in his office so his wife wouldnt find it and he would never allow it to be published in his lifetime. Perhaps thats because the gripping tale of an aristocratic landowner slowly overcome with unrelenting sexual desire for one of the peasants on his estate was strikingly similar to an affair Tolstoy himself had. Regardless the talepresented here with the two separate endings Tolstoy couldnt decide betweenis a scintillating study of sexual attraction and human obsession. The Art of The Novella Series Too short to be a novel too long to be a short story the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless it is a form beloved and practiced by literatures greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are in many instances presented in book form for the first time.