The Amazon (Russian: Вои′тельница, romanized: Voitelnitsa; translated also as The Warrior Woman) is a short novel by Nikolai Leskov, first published in the April (vol.1; No.7) 1866 issue of Otechestvennye Zapiski, with a dedication to the artist Mikhail Mikeshin (with whom the author was friends at the time).
The epigraph, "The whole of my life has been a set of lessons, of which my death is but another one," comes from the lyrical drama Lucius (Люций) by Apollon Maykov (Seneka's words in part 1 of it).
[1] Domna Platonovna, a forceful and industrious woman who seems to be in contact with half of Saint Petersburg, is in a state of permanent war with the outside world.
To illustrate how badly people treat her, she tells the narrator the story of Lekanida Petrovna, a beautiful and sensitive woman who, having left her provincial husband, came to the capital hoping to find her happiness here, only to be forced into prostitution, by Domna Platonovna herself.
Curious as to what circumstances might have turned a human being (she once apparently must have been) into such a pathetic 'fat-hearted' creature, he tries to draw from her some kind of confession, but the stories she tells him about her past are comically bizarre and explain little.