Product Description: The year is 1910. Anna Karenina and War and Peace have made Leo Tolstoy the world's most famous author. But fame comes at a price. In this fascinating look at a tortured genius on the eve of death, Jay Parini presents Tolstoy's autobiographical writing alongside letters from loved ones to paint a portrait of the great author's final year...read more

Product Description: Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy, author of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina", said of the daily records that he had kept all his life: "the diaries are me". They open in 1847 with Tolstoy recovering from gonorrhoea, and, spanning the following 60 years, they paint a portrait of Tolstoy's political, moral and literary beliefs...read more

Product Description: Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy, author of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina", said of the daily records that he had kept all his life: "the diaries are me". They open in 1847 with Tolstoy recovering from gonorrhoea, and, spanning the following 60 years, they paint a portrait of Tolstoy's political, moral and literary beliefs...read more

Product Description: This is a critical introduction to the novels and short stories of Tolstoy, treating them in their own right as works of literature, not as biographical evidence or contributions to a philosophical system. The heart of the book, inevitably, is in the two long chapters which examine War and Peace and Anna Karenina in detail, but most of Tolstoy's other fiction is also discussed and there is a chapter on his drama and his aesthetic theories...read more