A brilliant short novel based on Tolstoy’s years as a soldier in the Caucasus, The Cossacks has all the energy and poetry of youth while at the same time foreshadowing the great themes of Tolstoy’s later years. In depicting the experience of a young officer living among tribesmen on the borders of southern Russia, Tolstoy explores the birth and death of love, the transience of life, the love of honour and the pain of war, all portrayed amidst the wild and magnificent landscape of the mountains and described in exquisite detail.