Short stories · 1855–56
Sevastopol Sketches
Севастопольские рассказы
War from the inside: sketches of the besieged Crimean fortress, by an officer who was there.
LT
Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910 · Russia As an Amazon Associate, The Put’ earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.
Three sketches, set in December 1854, May 1855 and August 1855, drawn from Tolstoy’s own service in the besieged Crimean fortress of Sevastopol. Instead of glory, he shows fear, boredom, vanity and death, seen through the eyes of ordinary soldiers and officers.
They made his name with a national audience, and they set the tone for the war scenes of War and Peace: honest, unheroic and impossible to forget.
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