Brilliantly conceived and executed, this slender volume should hold great appeal to both teachers of literature and students of life ... In her masterful translation, Lodge captures the writer's full stylistic register, from his quiet lyricism, lucid metaphors, fleshy descriptions, and arresting juxtapositions to his at times torturous syntax, defamiliarizing word choice, and scathing, mirthless wit. Like his contemporaries, modern readers cannot help but marvel at the range and originality of Tolstoy's experiments in the literature of death, from the felling of a tree at the close of Three Deaths to the dark inner worlds of characters drawing their last breath. Lodge's inclusion of Strider -a short story told from the perspective of a dying horse-feels especially timely in light of the recent turn in literary criticism toward animal studies ... Taken together, Lodge's selections from Tolstoy's oeuvre form a sort of modern dance macabre in which death, indifferent and inhuman, fells not only sinners from all stations of life but also plants, animals, self, and other. As her volume amply demonstrates, Tolstoy-more than a century after his own storied death at the Astapovo train station-remains as vital as ever. - Jefferson J.A. Gatrall, Montclair State University