Photograph of Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

(1828—1910)

Russian Federation

Biography

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer widely regarded as one of the greatest novelists of all time. His masterpieces, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, represent in the breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes - the peak of realist fiction.

Tolstoy's further talents as an essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer have made him the most influential member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centring on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

ePub Books Available by Leo Tolstoy

3 Titles Online

Anna Karenina Book Cover Image

Anna Karenina [en] (1877)Film!

A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution, Anna Karenina portrays the moving story of people whose emotions conflict with the dominant social mores of their time. Sensual, rebellious Anna falls deeply and passionately in love with the handsome Count Vronsky. When she...

Genre: Romance

Childhood Book Cover Image

Childhood [en] (1852)

The artistic work of Leo Tolstoy has been described as "nothing less than one tremendous diary kept for over fifty years." This particular "diary" begins with Tolstoy's first published work,CHILDHOOD, which was written when he was only 23. A semi-autobiographical work, it recounts two days in...

Genre: Biography/Memoir

War and Peace Book Cover Image

War and Peace [en] (1869)Film!

The most famous—and perhaps greatest—novel of all time, Tolstoy’s War and Peace tells the story of five families struggling for survival during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.Among its many unforgettable characters is Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, a proud, dashing man who, despising the artifice of...

Genres: Classic Literature, Historical Fiction, Romance, War