Pocket Books Reviews, No. 6

The Cossacks

By Leo Tolstoy

“The Cossacks,” a novella by Leo Tolstoy, tells the story of Olenin, a city-dweller who enlists to fight with the Cossacks in the Caucases. Like a lot of great literary heroes, Olenin is fundamentally misguided. He doesn’t understand himself, or the people he has chosen to live among, and his idealistic pronouncements are undermined by the action of the story as it unfolds. “The Cossacks” is also a vivid portrait of the Cossacks, who, it turns out, were hipster frontier mercenaries, the bike messengers of their age, with baggy coats and saddle bags, the fastest horses and the finest rifles. Who knew?

It’s another paperback, a Penguin Classic with a cool black cover graced by a nice detail from a work by Franz Roubaud, and if you head to the store you’ll notice all the Penguin Classics are on sale, probably because next year’s catalog is about to be released.

Charge!