Rating: 
Summary: An excellent story.
Review: Even though this was published shortly after Tolstoy's death in 1910 and with the Chechen war still raging today it is easy to imagine the events that unfold before Hadji Murad occurring recently. Tolstoy's flavorful writing is such that you can almost smell the smoke of the cigarettes and burning wood from the forts and aouls. I will not go over what this book is about since so many other reviews have already done a fine job, but one thing I would like to mention is the excellent introduction by Azar Nafisi. Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, outlines and provides a compact analysis of Hadji Murad as well as some historical information. It is worth reading the introduction before AND after you finish Hadji Murad.
Rating:
Summary: Relevant today
Review: I had read most of the major works of Tolstoy years ago but had somehow missed this novel in doing so. I have to say, I am not the biggest Tolstoy fan in the world, I find his later works preachy and War and Peace nothing more than an over large soap opera. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by Hadji Murad. The story is as relevant today as when it was written, if not more so. Americans and Europeans typically have little understanding of this part of the world. Likewise, some politicians seem to have even less understanding of what makes a culture tick. To successfully wage a war, one must understand the "enemy." This includes compassion and respect for their culture. Hadji Murad is the perfect illustration of a lack of understanding. This novel has a lot to teach those who are in power today.
Rating:
Summary: perhaps Harold Bloom got a little bit carried away
Review: Like most everyone who's read his terrific book The Western Canon, it was Harold Bloom who sent
me scurrying to find Hadji Murad. We, all of us, take a stab at War and Peace and Anna Karenina,
and many schools assign the shorter Death of Ivan Ilych as required reading. But not many of us
venture beyond these narrowly circumscribed borders. Heck, the thousands of pages required just to
finish his major works seems like all we should be required to stand. But then came Bloom's soaring
endorsement of this minor work, and suddenly it was back into the breech.Now, I confess, though I did like the novella and found it much easier reading, perhaps only because
shorter, than his other books. But I can't fathom Bloom's statement that : It is my personal touchstone for the sublime of prose fiction, to me the best story in the world, or
at least the best that I have ever read. Bloom seems particularly taken by the character of Hadji Murad, his heroic qualities, and by the
"growth" he displays over the course of the tale. Indeed, he is likable in a roguish way, but he's also
utterly unreliable and ultimately foolish. These are not heroic qualities in my book. He's unreliable in the sense that his allegiances switch back and forth between the Russians and the
Chechens whenever changing circumstances make the one side or the other more personally
convenient. Absent is the kind of consistent political philosophy or moral matrix that makes for a
great hero. And he's foolish in that he rides off to near certain death in a futile effort to rescue his
family. Though appealingly sentimental, this is the suicidal gesture of an unserious person. What
good does adding his death to theirs do anyone? Tolstoy does an impressive job of detailing many of the layers of the society of the time and of
presenting both sides in the conflict. He is generous with the Chechens, whom, as a Russian, he might
be expected to treat ill, and ungentle with the Tsar, who he might be expected to spare. Hadji Murad,
even if he does not rise to the level of archetypal hero, is nonetheless someone we root for and who we
are genuinely sorry to see meet tragedy. All of this is more than enough to recommend the book,
without being enough to call it the greatest piece of prose in the history of man. GRADE : A-
Rating:
Summary: perhaps Harold Bloom got a little bit carried away
Review: Like most everyone who's read his terrific book The Western Canon, it was Harold Bloom who sent
me scurrying to find Hadji Murad. We, all of us, take a stab at War and Peace and Anna Karenina,
and many schools assign the shorter Death of Ivan Ilych as required reading. But not many of us
venture beyond these narrowly circumscribed borders. Heck, the thousands of pages required just to
finish his major works seems like all we should be required to stand. But then came Bloom's soaring
endorsement of this minor work, and suddenly it was back into the breech. Now, I confess, though I did like the novella and found it much easier reading, perhaps only because
shorter, than his other books. But I can't fathom Bloom's statement that : It is my personal touchstone for the sublime of prose fiction, to me the best story in the world, or
at least the best that I have ever read. Bloom seems particularly taken by the character of Hadji Murad, his heroic qualities, and by the
"growth" he displays over the course of the tale. Indeed, he is likable in a roguish way, but he's also
utterly unreliable and ultimately foolish. These are not heroic qualities in my book. He's unreliable in the sense that his allegiances switch back and forth between the Russians and the
Chechens whenever changing circumstances make the one side or the other more personally
convenient. Absent is the kind of consistent political philosophy or moral matrix that makes for a
great hero. And he's foolish in that he rides off to near certain death in a futile effort to rescue his
family. Though appealingly sentimental, this is the suicidal gesture of an unserious person. What
good does adding his death to theirs do anyone? Tolstoy does an impressive job of detailing many of the layers of the society of the time and of
presenting both sides in the conflict. He is generous with the Chechens, whom, as a Russian, he might
be expected to treat ill, and ungentle with the Tsar, who he might be expected to spare. Hadji Murad,
even if he does not rise to the level of archetypal hero, is nonetheless someone we root for and who we
are genuinely sorry to see meet tragedy. All of this is more than enough to recommend the book,
without being enough to call it the greatest piece of prose in the history of man. GRADE : A-
Rating:
Summary: Courageous Warrior
Review: The action takes place in the middle of the 19th century. Then, as now, the Russian army was engaged in a major, and exhausting, offensive in the Caucasus, in the area now known as Chechnya. The hero, Hadji Murad is a Chechen war lord and freedom fighter, who wants to liberate his people from oppression by the Russians. But he first needs to defeat Imam Shamil a Chechen leader, who controls a part of the country, and has imprisoned Hadji Murad's wife and son. In the attempt to do this, he enlists the support of the Russians by defecting to them. Murad informs the Russians that he won't be able to assist them unless he gets their support in getting his family safely back from Shamils grip. Who are (naturally) suspicious of him, but willing to use him as a way of extending their control of the area. Some of them incline to do so, but others fear he might be just spying on them. The action drags on, with no resolution arrived at, until Murad makes his final dash. The narrators eye become a film camera, meticulously recording the movement of characters, creating the terrain capturing sounds and images in motion, coaxing the reader into following each move around each bend. The world Tolstoy describes has an air of brilliancy about it. He has the ability to portray the most mundane scenes and ordinary gestures as if they have just been discovered by him. In the text Hadji Murad moves from Chechen village to the Russian military posts, from ballroom and houses to the woods and open fields, all the scenes arise magically. On the while it was a fun read and very descriptive in details.
Rating:
Summary: Cover
Review: The book is great. The cover of this edition is to say least ridiculous (slightly out of date)!
Rating:
Summary: Between a rock and a hard place
Review: This is the partially fictionalized account of the last days of Hadji Murad, a renowned and feared Chechen -more precisely, Avar- warrior in 1851-52. Feared by the ruthless Imam Shamil, ruler of Chechens and other Caucasians, Murad is forced to defect yet again to the Russians, who recieve him warmly but suspiciously (he has switched sides before). Murad keeps telling the Russians he won't be of much help unless they support him in getting his family safe and back from the cruel Shamil. Some of them incline to do so, but others fear he might be just spying on them. The action drags on, with no resolution arrived at, until Murad makes his final dash. As literature, the story is incredibly well written; as background information on the origins of the still-going-on Chechen war, it is priceless. Tolstoi show here his very literary genius: in only 125 pages, he conveys a portrait of many characters, each and every one with his/her own full personality. It is marvelous how Tolstoi can give a whole personality to even the minor characters in a short work. The depictions of landscapes and circumstances are also masterful, and you can really feel the cold wind and see the wooded mountains of that magnetic and troublesome corner, neither fully European nor Asian. It is, then, the story of a real man who got caught between the despised Russians and the murderous Chechen leader, really a tragic figure in the sense that he has to make decisiones in front of certain death for him and for his family, whom he deeply loves. Great literature tends to be that which posts credible and appealing characters in limit-situations, and this is clearly one of the best. Refreshing to read an action-packed, well-written, historically interesting story with compelling characters.
Rating:
Summary: Hadji Murad your courage lives on
Review: This story especially means a lot to me, as Hadji Murad was my great uncle and I am so honored that his life was told by one of the greatest authors of history. Thank you Tolstoy.
Rating:
Summary: "War? War, indeed!...Cutthroats and nothing else!" HM, 118
Review: Tolstoy's brilliant but quiet and cold-eyed satire of war-makers, both Russian and Chechen, from the lordly heights of the Tsar's Winter Palace to the scattered villages of Muslim fighters at the Caucasian edge of empire, and all players between. A "war story," yes, but in a league with For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Naked and the Dead, The Things They Carried, all of which it surpasses I think. Hard to convey the power of this little book. Much is in the structure: 25 chapters in 125 pages, the action alternating between the Russian and the Chechen sides, and from one place to another within each side, this alternation itself effecting a kind of commentary on the plot. (The brief, parallel glimpses of the Russian and Chechen homefronts in chapters 8 and 17, which show how differently, but how horribly in both cases, the war is brought home, are especially keen.) Also a meditation on the nature of true heroism, and on what it means to live one's life with a true awareness of death, of which attitude the title character, Hadji Murad, becomes the doomed and blessed embodiment. Perhaps not (pace Bloom) the greatest single narrative in the Western canon, but Perfect, in its own formidable terms.
Rating: 
Summary: Deep thoughts
Review: Upon reading Tolstoy, one is always stricken by a sense that the writer is a very wise man with an instinctive grasp of human psychology and behavior. This is also the case in Hadji Murad, the story about a legendary warrior of the Caucasus. The novel is full of insight, but as a story it does not quite meet expectations when one has been told by Harold Bloom that it is nothing less than the the "world's greatest". Hadji Murad is a warrior and a chieftain, torn between the Russians and Muslim fighters following the imam Shamil. He hates Shamil personally as much as he hates Russians generally, and switches sides if necessary to gain advantage. Despite his conscious cynicism and instrumental rationality, Murad is depicted as more of a force of nature than a modern man. He is an image held up by Tolstoy to demonstrate the virtue of devotion to God (in Hadji's case, Allah), family, and loyal friends. As the opposing image of vanity, pettyness and shallow immorality Tolstoy presents the czar Nikolai. Other Russians of high standing (noblemen and -women and military officers) are similary derided as drunks, adulterers, gamblers and layabouts. The chapter about the czar meeting the minister of war in St. Petersburg is insightful and very funny, but at the same time a complete detour with regards to the plot. The plot is actually rather insubstantial, and the story moves along without any major twists and turns. To me, this book became more of a presentation of Tolstoy's thought (which, of course, is quite interesting) and less the sublime story I was hoping for.
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