The Gospel in Brief: The Life of Jesus -- Leo Tolstoy

<p><strong>"<em>The Gospel in Brief</em> lives at the center of Leo Tolstoy's thinking about the meaning of life. ... Beautifully translated by Dustin Condren. ... Although little known, this book remains hugely important." --Jay Parini, author of <em>The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year</em></strong></p><p>The most celebrated novelist of all time, the author of <em>Anna Karenina</em> and <em>War and Peace</em>, retells the greatest story ever told, integrating the four Gospels into a single twelve-chapter narrative of the life of Jesus. Based on his study of early Christian texts, Leo Tolstoy's remarkable <em>The Gospel in Brief</em>--virtually unknown to English readers until this landmark new translation by Dustin Condren--makes accessible the powerful, mystical truth of Jesus's spiritual teaching, stripped of artificial church doctrine. If you are not acquainted with <em>The Gospel in Brief</em>, wrote the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose life was profoundly influenced by it, then you cannot imagine what an effect it can have upon a person. </p><p>"A fresh translation destined to introduce a new generation to a fuller understanding of Tolstoy's mind." --<em>Kirkus Reviews</em><br/></p><p>"Dustin Condren captures, in this fresh idiomatic translation, the dazzlingly audacious achievement of <em>The Gospel in Brief, </em> Tolstoy's daring synthesis the New Testament accounts of Jesus." --Edward E. Ericson, Jr., editor of <em>The Solzhenitsyn Reader</em><br