
author
1828–1910
Best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, this towering Russian novelist brought ordinary life, history, and moral struggle onto the page with unusual depth and clarity. His later writing and beliefs on nonviolence, simplicity, and religion also shaped readers far beyond literature.

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Born at Yasnaya Polyana in 1828, Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer from an aristocratic family who became one of the central figures of world literature. He first drew on his own youth and military experience in early works such as Childhood, and later achieved lasting fame with War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
Tolstoy was admired for the scale and realism of his fiction, especially the way he connected private lives with larger historical forces. Over time, he also became deeply concerned with spiritual and ethical questions, and his later work explored religion, conscience, nonviolence, and simple living.
He spent much of his life linked to his family estate, Yasnaya Polyana, and died in 1910. More than a century later, his novels, stories, and essays remain widely read for their emotional truth, psychological insight, and searching view of how people ought to live.