'an ingenious, seamless approach that distinguishes his biography from others' - The Economist 'Books of the Year'
'illuminates Tolstoy's personal prejudices and passions as the core of his fiction' - Zinovy Zinik, TLS 'Books of the Year'
When he arrived in Moscow in 1851, a young Leo Tolstoy set himself three immediate aims: to gamble, to marry and to obtain a post. At that time he managed only the first. The writer’s momentous life would be full of forced breaks and abrupt departures, from the death of his beloved parents to an abandonment of the social class into which he had been born. Andrei Zorin skilfully pieces together Tolstoy's life, offering an account of the novelist’s deepest feelings and motives, and a brilliant interpretation of his major works, including the celebrated novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
Andrei Zorin is Professor and Chair of Russian at the University of Oxford, UK. He is the author and co-author of many books on Russian literature and culture including On The Periphery of Europe 1762-1825: The Self-Invention of the Russian Elite (2018).