What Men Live By, and Other Tales

About the book

A shoemaker hoping to obtain a winter coat encounters someone whose need interrupts his own plans. That meeting opens What Men Live By, the first of four tales in this volume. Three Questions, The Coffee-House of Surat, and How Much Land Does a Man Need? approach related moral problems through different situations and forms of conversation. Tolstoy gives material necessities a central place: warmth, labour, shelter, and land are never merely decorative details. The stories use clear narrative situations to test the relation between an expressed belief and an action taken at another person's expense. Their simplicity leaves room for reflection rather than requiring a complicated cast. Read one at a time, noticing how the opening question changes as the consequences of a choice become visible.

• Compassion in action
• Material desire
• Moral judgment

Why read it

For concentrated stories that make ethical questions concrete through work, need, and ordinary decisions.

Four-tale collection · English text