Simply Tolstoy

The writer who turned the human struggle into epic literature.

Leo Tolstoy wrote about war, marriage, family, faith, politics, and the search for a meaningful life with an honesty that can still feel startling. In Simply Tolstoy, literary scholar Donna Tussing Orwin offers an accessible introduction to the life and work of one of the greatest novelists in world literature. From War and Peace and Anna Karenina to his later philosophical and religious writings, Orwin explores Tolstoy’s extraordinary ability to move between sweeping historical events and the private lives of ordinary people. She examines the ideas that shaped his fiction, including his views on love, morality, violence, religion, social inequality, and human freedom, while also tracing the dramatic changes in Tolstoy’s own life. The result is an engaging portrait of a writer whose novels are enormous in scope but ultimately concerned with questions that remain deeply personal: how should we live, whom should we love, and what makes a life worthwhile?

• An accessible introduction to Leo Tolstoy’s life, novels, and ideas
• Explores major works including War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich
• Examines Tolstoy’s views on love, morality, religion, violence, society, and human nature
• Places his writing within the political and cultural world of nineteenth-century Russia
• Explores the dramatic transformation of Tolstoy from celebrated novelist to moral and religious thinker

Available in multiple formats:

Paperback — Elegant print edition presenting the complete, unabridged text, and ships in 3–5 business days.
Hardcover — Elegant print edition presenting the complete, unabridged text, and ships in 5–7 business days.
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Audiobook — Professionally narrated, complete and unabridged. Available on Audible, Spotify, Apple Books.

Tolstoy’s novels may span thousands of pages and encompass entire societies, but their power comes from something much more intimate: their understanding of what it means to be human. Simply Tolstoy offers an inviting introduction to the writer, thinker, and restless seeker behind some of the greatest novels ever written.

About the Author

Donna Tussing Orwin is a scholar of Russian literature and a leading authority on Leo Tolstoy. She has written extensively on Tolstoy’s novels, philosophical ideas, and place in Russian literary history. Her books include Consequences of Consciousness: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy and Simply Tolstoy. Orwin’s scholarship explores the connections between literature, philosophy, ethics, and the historical world in which Russian writers lived and worked.