Donald Trump presents a problem for writers. His political success led to calls for artists to confront authoritarianism and bigotry directly in their work. “Many writers would argue that all fiction ...

THE other night I picked up, quite by accident, Tolstoy’s story “The Master and the Worker” in German translation, and having started reading it, I could not stop until I reached the end. I had read ...

FIFTY years ago, Leo Tolstoy lay dying in the stationmaster’s house at Astapovo, a tiny railroad siding in the center of Russia. One of his children bent down to catch the almost inaudible last words ...