Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy

He trusted no one. He betrayed everyone. He never surrendered. The year is 1851. In the rugged mountains of the Caucasus, a legendary warrior flees from both sides. Hadji Murad—feared by the Russians, hunted by his own commander—walks into the enemy camp with a desperate gambit: ally with the empire to save the family he loves, then turn again. But empires do not keep promises. And tribal honor does not forget. Tolstoy's final masterpiece—written fifty years after the events it describes, published only after his death—cuts to the bone of human conflict. Through the eyes of a man trapped between two tyrannies, we see war as it truly is: not glory, but betrayal; not heroes, but survivors; not enemies, but people—Chechen villagers watching their homes burn, Russian soldiers dreaming of their mothers, a chieftain whose severed head still wears a "kindly, childlike expression." The greatest short novel ever written. The story of every man who ever fought for something and lost everything.