The Devil

A wealthy young landowner, Eugene Irtenev, marries happily and settles into respectable country life, but finds himself unable to break free of an obsessive entanglement with a peasant woman from his past. As his guilt and desire pull him toward ruin, Tolstoy examines with unflinching honesty the destructive power of sexual obsession. Written around 1889 but withheld from publication during Tolstoy's lifetime out of concern for how it might be received, The Devil appears here with both endings the author considered, translated into English for the first time by Aylmer Maude.