Leo Tolstoy

The Russian novelist and moral philosopher Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) ranks as one of the world's great writers, and his War and Peace has been called the greatest novel ever written.

Leo Tolstoy was one of the great rebels of all time, a man who during a long and stormy life was at odds with Church, government, literary tradition, and his own family. Yet he was a conservative, obsessed by the idea of God in an age of scientific positivism. He brought the art of the realistic novel to its highest development. Tolstoy's brooding concern for death made him one of the precursors of existentialism. Yet the bustling spirit that animates his novels conveys--perhaps--more of life than life itself.

Tolstoy's father, Count Nikolay Ilyich Tolstoy, came of a noble family dating back to the 14th century and prominent from the time of Peter I. Both Tolstoy's father and grandfather had a passion for gambling and had exhausted the family wealth.


Essential Facts
1.Tolstoy lost his mother when he was only two years old and his father seven years later.
2.Tolstoy was sent to law school but soon returned home. His teachers found him completely unwilling to learn.
3.Tolstoy loved to gamble and as a young man often found himself in debt due to his gambling habit.
4.Tolstoy rarely hung out with the writers of his time. He found them too liberal and too fascinated with Western (European and American) living styles.
5.Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi were inspired by Tolstoy’s philosophy of nonviolence.


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