A short fictionalized memoir of Haji Murat, who had defected from the Chechen separatists and joined the Imperial Russian forces.. in order to avenge and prevent the deaths of his immediate family members. Tolstoy painted an apt picture of people trapped in an ignoble war - where lives are cheap, all but lost to dirty politics on both sides of the divide. It gets one to reflect on the brevity of our own lives, how everything pales in significance when you are faced with an impending death, how life resumes to normalcy regardless of how tragic your death was and how highly people had thought of you when you were living.