Lev Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy

Lev Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich, Count (Graf) Tolstoy was born on the 28th August 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula province. He died on the 20th November 1910 in Astapovo in the Ryazan province. Tolstoy was a Russian author, a master of realistic fiction and one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is best known for his two longest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which are commonly regarded as among the finest novels ever written. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist.