Master and Man

About this book

Wealthy merchant Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov sets out with his servant Nikita to secure a profitable deal, pushing on despite worsening weather. When their sleigh is lost in a snowstorm, class pride and practical panic collide on an empty field. Tolstoy slows time to the pace of cold, exhaustion, and conscience, asking what each man owes the other when survival is uncertain. The landscape is harsh, the dialogue spare, and the moral pressure relentless. Master and Man is among Tolstoy's most accessible late works, a story of hierarchy softened by shared vulnerability, told with the authority of a writer who has seen how quickly fortune turns.