The Cossacks and the Raid — Leo Tolstoy

The Raid was Tolstoy's first novel. The Cossacks, is to enter the workshop of a great writer and thinker. In this book, Tolstoy explores the nature of courage itself. In the book, the hero is a young man-about-town who has squandered half his fortune -- and his life -- and retires to the desultory existence of a regiment stationed in mountainous Cossack country, where he takes part in the daily life of a Cossack village. But his love for the beautiful Maryanka precipitates a conflict between the belief that "Happiness lies in living for others" and a passion that sweeps self-abnegation aside.