num_pages: 632
description: In "Tolstoy", accomplished novelist and biographer A. N. Wilson narrates with dazzling, witty, wonderfully readable prose the complex drama of the writer's life--his childhood of aristocratic privilege but emotional deprivation, his discovery of his literary genius after aimless years of gambling and womanizing, his increasingly disastrous marriage. Wilson sweeps away the long-held belief that Tolstoy's works were the exact mirror of his life, and instead traces the roots of Tolstoy's art to his relationship with God, with women, and with Russia. He also breaks new ground in re-creating the world that shaped the great novelist's life and art--the turmoil of ideas and politics in nineteenth-century Russia and the incredible literary renaissance that made Tolstoy's work possible. Most of all, Wilson fathoms, as no other biographer has done, the true nature of Tolstoy the man.
language: English
title: Tolstoy
titlecomplete: Tolstoy
characters: Leo Tolstoy
genres: Russian Literature, Biography, Classics, History, Russia, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Literature, Memoir
ratings_count: 390
awards: awardedAt: 568022400000
name: Whitbread Award
category: Biography
publisher: Ballantine Books