Love and hatred
Subtitle: The troubled marriage of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy
By: William L. Shirer.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1994
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 400
ISBN-13: 9780671881627
Subjects: Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910 -- Marriage; Tolstai͡a︡, S. A. 1844-1919 -- Marriage; Authors, Russian -- 19th century -- Biography; Authors' spouses -- Russia -- Biography
Description: A touching, brilliant, and groundbreaking biography of one of literary history's most famous couples, at once a dual biography, a history, and the portrait of a long and stormy marriage, William L. Shirer's new book - written in his ninth decade - explores the passionate, highly charged, and extraordinary lives of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy.

It is a compelling illumination both of the nature of genius and of the universal problems of love, sex, and marriage - themes that Tolstoy played out in his great fiction and that haunted him in his tangled domestic life.

Rich in anecdotes, wise, full of sweeping history, and imbued with Shirer's profound knowledge of literature and life, Love and Hatred ranks beside such works as Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra and Nigel Nicolson's Portrait of a Marriage as a masterly, intuitive, and sympathetic exploration of the love/hate relationship between two famous, bigger-than-life people.

Beginning in 1862, when Tolstoy committed the blunder of asking his young bride to read his diaries of his bachelor life so there should be no secrets between them, and ending with his tragic flight from home (and marriage) in 1910 while the whole world waited for news of him, Love and Hatred tells the story of a great romance between two people who could live neither together nor apart - a romance that exhausted and obsessed them both, and that forms the basis for much of Tolstoy's work.

The final book of William L. Shirer's long and brilliant career, it is - appropriately - a masterly re-creation of a time, of two extraordinary people, and of the very nature of love, marriage, and old age.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 384-386) and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue : Flight! October 28, 1910; title: Book one : The years before : 1828-1879.; title: The trials of early marriage; title: A narrow escape from matrimony; title: Two very different kinds of love; title: A whirlwind courtship; title: Marriage at last, despite the doubts; title: Yasnaya Polyana, Sonya's jealousies, and War and Peace; title: Anna Karenina; title: Tolstoy's great midlife crisis; title: Book two : The last years : 1879-1910.; title: The troubled saint; title: The advent of Chertkov; title: The Kreutzer Sonata; title: Conflict and good works; title: Sonya's strange infatuation; title: No rest, no peace for the writer at seventy; title: War and revolution, illness and death; title: The return of Chertkov; title: Book three : The last year : 1910.; title: The beginning of the end; title: The last month; title: The last weeks; title: The last days; title: Flight!; title: Epilogue