graf. Leo Tolstoy

Born at Yasnaya Polyana in 1828, Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer whose novels, stories, and essays made him one of the most influential figures in world literature. He served in the army as a young man, and his early experiences helped shape the vivid realism and psychological depth that readers still admire today.

His greatest-known books, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, combine sweeping social worlds with intimate portraits of love, conflict, duty, and doubt. Tolstoy also wrote shorter works such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Hadji Murad, showing the same gift for making big philosophical questions feel immediate and personal.

Later in life, he became deeply concerned with religion, morality, nonviolence, and social justice, and those concerns strongly influenced his essays and later fiction. He died in 1910, but his writing remains strikingly alive—serious, compassionate, and endlessly interested in how people actually live.