Main description:

The most celebrated novelist of all time 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 The Gospel in Brief—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 The Gospel in Brief," 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."

Review quote:

“The Gospel in Brief 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.”

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“A fascinating and thoroughly unorthodox rewriting of the Gospels and restatement of Christianity.”

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“A fresh translation destined to introduce a new generation to a fuller understanding of Tolstoy’s mind.”

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“Dustin Condren captures, in this fresh idiomatic translation, the dazzlingly audacious achievement of The Gospel in Brief, Tolstoy’s daring synthesis the New Testament accounts of Jesus.”

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“Newly translated by Dustin Condren, Tolstoy’s Gospel in Brief offers us a Jesus stripped of the overlay of Christian dogma and ancient metaphysics: his Jesus confronts readers with a real challenge and a call to change their lives.”

Short description/annotation:

The greatest novelist of all time retells the greatest story ever told, the life of Jesus Christ, in The Gospel in Brief—Leo Tolstoy’s riveting, novelistic integration of the four Gospels into a single, twelve-chapter narrative. Virtually unknown to English readers until now, Dustin Condren’s groundbreaking translation from the Russian opens a precious new world of Tolstoy’s masterful literary talent to fans of War and Peace and Anna Karenina.