The Kreutzer Sonata

On a night train, a restless passenger named Pozdnyshev tells a stranger how he came to kill his wife. What follows is his long, unsparing confession, a case built against jealousy, physical desire, and the whole institution of marriage as he has known it. Tolstoy wrote it during his late religious crisis, and the story doubles as a blunt moral argument, provocative enough that Russian censors banned it. The title comes from the Beethoven violin sonata his wife plays with another man, music Pozdnyshev hears as a kind of seduction. Few short works stirred more argument in their day. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available to download.