Available as eBook
Made into a major motion picture starring Helen Mirren and James McAvoy
1910. Anna Karenina and War and Peace have made Leo Tolstoy the world’s most famous author. But fame comes at a price.
In the tumultuous final year of his life, Tolstoy is desperate to find respite, so leaves his large family and the hounding press behind and heads into the wilderness. Too ill to venture beyond the tiny station of Astapovo, he believes his last days will pass in peaceful isolation. But the battle for Tolstoy’s soul will not be so simple.
“A modern classic and an unforgettable portrait of Russia on the cusp of revolution.”
simon Sebag Montefiore
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“Stylish, beautifully paced and utterly beguiling.”
sunday Times
“One of the best historical novels written in the last twenty years.”
Gore Vidal
“An impressively knowing and sensitive performance, a wistful late twentieth-century tribute to the giant conflicts of a more titanic age.”
observer
“Remarkable … One of those rare works of fiction that demonstrates both scrupulous historical research and true originality of voice.”
new York Times
Jay Parini
Jay Parini is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College, Vermont. His six novels also include Benjamins Crossing and The Apprentice Lover. His volumes of poetry include The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems. In addition to biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost and William Faulkner, he has written a volume of essays on literature and politics, as well as The Art of Teaching. He edited the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and writes regularly for the Guardian and other publications.