TOLSTOY Translated from the French by Nancy Amphoux.

by Henri Troyat

Book Overview

In this definitive portrait of one of the greatest novelists of all time, Leo Tolstoy embodies the most extraordinary contradictions. He was a wealthy aristocrat who preached the virtues of poverty... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• ISBN: B0026POCS8
• Release Date: January 1967
• Publisher: Doubleday & Co.
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A masterpiece in both scope and detail.........

Henri Troyat has done a superb job of crafting the life story of Leo Tolstoy into something which almost reads as a novel, a page-turner in its own right. The intimacy with which he thoroughly knows of and understands Leo Tolstoy's life and his works is nothing short of remarkable, and this is a biography I would be surprised at seeing bettered any time down the road. Tolstoy is on view for all to see, from his world-renowned works, to personal letters written to close acquaintances, to his own personal diary, Troyat makes use of every available resource to give us an up close and personal view of Tolstoy's life. The research done in comprising this most thorough work of Tolstoy's life is simply astonishing. Troyat has crafted a masterpiece which is fun to read, though admittedly this was made a tad easier as it was biography of Tolstoy's life he had to work with. Tolstoy is a man of many dichotomies and this is at least partly what makes his life so very interesting. He was one of the greatest writers of all time, yet he despised literature. He inspired a peace movement led by Gandhi, and yet at one time owned peasants (admittedly early on in his life). He wrote of how life should be lived, and yet could not get along with his own wife (and wound up dying in a train station at the age of 82). The life of Leo Tolstoy cannot be summarized in a few short paragraphs, and even if it could, it would be doing a great man a grave injustice. Tolstoy deserves a biography which is comprehensive in depth and contains details not only of his life but also of his works......Troyat has given us this. And throughout this book, Troyat draws comparisons between Tolstoy and characters in his literature, such as the time his brothers dragged him to a brothel at the age of 17, leaving him to feel ashamed afterwards (while in one of his works the character visits a brothel only to cry at the edge of the bed afterwards). Many other examples abound throughout the narrative where Tolstoy writes himself into his works. But the average reader would probably not be able to distinguish when Tolstoy in fact does this without the exceptional work of Henri Troyat. Throughout the book it is all too evident that this was a work which Troyat put his heart and soul into, giving us insight into a great man whose life was so wide-ranging, from his early life in Moscow, to his middle years in the Caucauses, to his later years on Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy deserves a biography which is a masterpiece in both scope and detail....and Henri Troyat has provided this magnificently. 5 stars. One of the best biographies I have ever read.

no stone unturned.

Tolstoy once wrote in his diary "Nobody will ever understand me." I can imagine that many biographers have been tormented by those words as they tried to compile and collate information about the extraordinary life of this great "lion" of writers. Troyat has done a remarkable job of this daunting monumental task, and his book ought to be considered essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the lifelong inner struggle that seemed to fuel the creative genius of Leo Tolstoy. As others have commented, it truly does read with the pace and interest of a sweeping epic novel, and there doesn't seem to be any possible chronological gap that could be missing. It's all here: Tolstoy's ancestry, the early loss of both his parents, his military youth in the Caucasus, his bouts with profligacy, his fickle literary friendships, his blunderous courtship and tumultuous (to put it mildly) marriage with Sofya Behrs... and all of his day-to-day glaring contradictory theories that remind us of Herzen's assessment of him: "He oversteps the limits. His brain does not take time to digest the impressions it absorbs." Everything is here: his vacillating acceptance and rejection of earthly comfort, his never ending search for some form of self-imposed suffering to atone for his affluence, his frustrating envy of all who had the good fortune of being unfortunate... his ultimate rejection of a fortune.In my opinion, Leo Tolstoy was the greatest writer the world has ever produced. I've read other biographies of him, and consider Troyat's to be the best for many reasons, not the least of which is his selective restraint with detail. It's obvious that he probably read upwards of a million pages in order to give us this 900, and the finished product is never tedious. His look at Tolstoy is unbiased, he does not try to canonize him. It takes a great man to have every stone of his life upturned like this, and yet emerge as a hero. Tolstoy does!

A tour de force

If you happen to agree with me that Leo Tolstoy was one of the ten most creative bipeds (Perhaps THE most brilliant creative genius , even a notch above Shakespeare !) then you would would want to read this superb bio of the master,Reading Troyat account of Tolstoy's life is like being a fly on the wall of the Tolstoy estate at Yasnaya Polyana _____ Troyat has cast a wide net and scooped up a real gem of a book .

A Total Triumph

Troyat's book about Tolstoy was one of the most magnificent books I've ever read. Not only was I left with the impression that Troyat had read every word Tolstoy ever wrote (no small under- taking), but that he understood and respected his subject for his faults as well as his triumphs. Some parts of the book are sheer poetry, particularly his one chapter critique of War and Peace. When I finished reading the book, I went back and re-read that chapter. I consider Troyat one of the best biographers I've ever read, and he certainly lives up to his reputation in this book. Certainly one of his best.