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How Much Land Does a Man Need?

Leo Tolstoy

Pakhom, a peasant who complains of having no land, acquires more and more until the Bashkirs offer him as much as he can walk round in a day for a thousand roubles. Greedy, he takes in too much and dies of exhaustion at the finishing point; his servant digs his grave: six feet is all the land he needed. James Joyce called it the greatest story in literature. It belongs to the popular stories Tolstoy wrote after his conversion for the Posrednik press, in plain language and with the structure of a parable.