De eerste Russische psychologische roman, een vergeten meesterwerk. Lermontov beschrijft het leven van een soldaat in de Kaukasus, Petsjorin, van binnenuit, via dagboekfragmenten en van buitenaf, door de ogen van anderen. Bloedwraak, vrouwenroof, liefdesperikelen, smokkelhandel, kritisch commentaar op de Russische maatschappij en kleurrijke beschrijvingen van personen en landschap maken dit verhaal tot een onvergetelijke leeservaring.
These three stories were begun in the 1890s during the period when Tolstoy, tormented by questions of religion and morality, undertook literature almost as a guilty pleasure. He none the less put his highest art into them and only twinges of dogma. Both Father Sergius and Master and Man are preoccupied with material desires - for the flesh in one instance and in the other for money - although the first story, involving a dashing young officer turned monk, also bears out Tolstoy's assertion that 'the struggle with lust is...only a stage; the main struggle is with worldly fame'. Hadji Murat stands apart in that Tolstoy lost all compulsion to moralize and going back to the Caucasus where he spent his young manhood, gives us in a soldier-traitor one of his most memorable heroes.