The Life of Leo Tolstoy: An Attempt at Reading

Andrei Zorin “The Life of Leo Tolstoy: An Experience of Reading” is a super-modern, non-classical look at the life and work of a classic of Russian literature.

Leo Tolstoy has long become a calling card of Russian culture, but in today’s Russia his perception is often clouded by stereotypes inherited from the Soviet tradition. And precisely now Tolstoy is surprisingly relevant: the idea of nonviolent resistance, vegetarianism, downshifting, the demand to refuse military service, the struggle to preserve nature, attitudes toward love and sexuality—everything that once seemed like his oddity turns into a worldwide intellectual mainstream.

Andrei Zorin is a historian of literature, a professor at Oxford University and at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences.

Press about the book:

“I don’t know of another biography of Tolstoy that would be as concise, objective, easy to read, and thought-provoking as the one Andrei Zorin has written.”

Donald Rayfield, University of London, Queen Mary

“Against the backdrop of long-standing and lively disputes about the place of biographical knowledge in cultural history, Andrei Zorin’s book opens up a new genre. Four richly documented and elegantly written chapters of this innovative ‘literary biography’ allow a deeper immersion into nineteenth-century Russian culture than a traditional history can do. Combining a deep sensitivity to the uniqueness of the past with analytical transparency, Zorin managed to write an exemplary work marked by erudition and intellectual elegance.”

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University