Russian novelist (1828-1910)

In his 60s and beyond Tolstoy became famous as a kind of moral guru or secular saint: he preached the equal value' of all human beings, and suited actions to words by giving away his wealth, freeing his serfs and living an austere life in a cottage on the edge of his former estate. A similar view underlies his fiction. His ambition was to enter into the condition of each of his characters, to show the psychological complexity and diversity of the human race. His books are not tidily organised, with every event and emotion shaped to fit a central theme, but reflect the sprawl of life itself. The result was a psychological equivalent of Balzac's 'snapshots' in The Human Comedy. Whether Tolstoy is showing us a coachman who comes and goes in half a page, or a major character who appears throughout a book, he invites us to feel full sympathy for that person, makes us flesh out his or her reality' in terms of our own.

WAR AND PEACE  (1869) The book begins with people at a St Petersburg party in 1805 discussing the political situation in France, where Napoleon has just been proclaimed emperor. Tolstoy then fills 100 pages with seemingly random accounts of the lives and characters of a large group of relatives, friends, servants and dependants of three aristocrats, Andrey Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezuhov and Natasha Rostov. Gradually all these people become involved both with one another and with the gathering storm as Napoleon's armies sweep through Europe. The story culminates with the 1812 French invasion of Russia, Napoleon's defeat and his retreat from Moscow. The war touches the lives of all Tolstoy's people, and in particular resolves the triangle of affection between his central characters. The effects of war are the real subject of War and Peace. It contains 539 separate characters -- the range is from Napoleon to the girl who dresses Rostov's hair, from Bolkonsky to an eager young soldier sharpening his sword on the eve of battle -- and Tolstoy shows how their individual nature and feelings are both essential to and validated by the vast tapestry of human affairs of which they are part.

Tolstoy's other novels include Anna Karenina (in which an adulterous and tragic love-affair is used to focus a picture of the stifling, morally incompetent aristocratic Russian society of the 1860s), The Death of Ivan Illich, The Kreutzer Sonata, Master and Man and Resurrection. His autobiographical books include Childhood, Boyhood, Youth and A Confession.

READ ON

Anna Karenina

To War and Peace : Bernice Rubens, Mother Russia André Malraux, Man's Estate I.B. Singer, The Family Moskat Emile Zola, The Downfall (Le débacle) see also pathway

To Anna Karenina : George Eliot, Romola Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, On the Eve