Alexei Tolstoy. Author's Programme

In a new column called “Fate and Time: Proper Name,” writer and historian of literature Aleksei Varlamov tells about the life and work of one of the most talented and controversial Russian writers of the 20th century—Aleksei Nikolayevich Tolstoy.

Fate prepared for him, from the very beginning, an extraordinarily bright and dramatic life—one with rises and falls, novels and intrigues, scandals and exposés. A Symbolist poet, a pupil of Gumilyov and Voloshin, a friend of Bunin, an anti-Soviet figure and an émigré—in one life; and in another life, “the red count,” a deputy, an academician, and the chief writer of Soviet Russia.

A tireless man of letters and a great lover of life, he took on any work, knew how to survive in any circumstances, and worked every day, always and everywhere—whether on a migrant ship sailing to Turkey, or in his luxurious home by Soviet standards in Tsarskoye Selo.

Aleksei Varlamov, the author of wonderful biographies of Bulgakov, Prishvin, and Green, presents the story of writer Aleksei Tolstoy as an exciting novel in which each next turn of the “plot” is unpredictable…