Father Sergius
1911
Father Sergius is Tolstoy's unflinching portrait of a man who flees the world to find God, only to discover that his greatest enemy traveled with him. Prince Stepan Kasatsky abandons his aristocratic life after learning his fiancée was the Tsar's mistress, retreating to a monastery where he battles temptation and vanity for decades. The cruel paradox at the story's heart: as his reputation for holiness grows, so does the very pride he thought he'd escaped. Tolstoy strips away the romance of spiritual ambition to reveal the messy, ongoing struggle beneath. This is not a story about saints but about the complicated, striving human beings who try to become them.
