Sevastopol Sketches Audiobook By Leo Tolstoy cover art

Sevastopol Sketches

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Sevastopol Sketches

By: Leo Tolstoy
Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
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In the winter of 1854 Tolstoy, then an officer in the Russian army, arranged to be transferred to the besieged town of Sebastopol. Wishing to see at first hand the action of what would become known as the Crimean War, he was spurred on by a fierce patriotism, but also by an equally fierce desire to alert the authorities to appalling conditions in the army.

The three Sebastopol Sketches - 'December', 'May' and 'August' - re-create what happened during different phases of the siege and its effect on the ordinary men around him. Writing with the truth as his utmost aim, he brought home to Russia's entire literate public the atrocities of war. In doing so, he realized his own vocation as a writer and established his literary reputation.

Public Domain (P)2023 SNR Audio Classics Genre Fiction Military Thriller & Suspense War & Military World Literature

Critic reviews

If life could write, it would write like Tolstoy' - Isaac Babel
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Warming up exercise for his seminal work. Tolstoy experienced the siege of Sebastopol firsthand and what we have here are fictionalized remembrances of his time in the trenches. The short work is rather episodic and unlike War and Peace, there really isn’t much effort in character development.

War and peace it is not

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With his jeweler's eye for details, Tolstoy gives us a living experience of being in the Crimea campaign of the 1850s. Beautiful prose and great imagery brings us right into the action of a terrible war.

Jonathan Keeble does a fine job of narrating.

Tolstoy at His Most Powerful

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