Alexei Tolstoy: to play oneself

Alexei Varlamov — a prose writer, philologist, author of several biographies of writers, as well as novels, among which are My Soul is Pavel and Thoughtful Wolf. Laureate of literary awards — Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Big Book and the Student... Booker. Alexei Tolstoy, a prose writer known to everyone since childhood, turns out to be quite different from how readers perceive him. An emigrant and a patriot, a state man and an anarchist, an egoist and an exemplary family man — a figure full of contradictions and therefore infinitely interesting… I did not love my hero when I started writing this book. I knew that his origins were dark, that he was a cunning defector who betrayed the lofty ideals of the Russian emigration and became one of the brightest ideologists of the Soviet regime. I was preparing to expose and condemn him… But Alexei Tolstoy defeated me, forcing me to reconsider the most common literary myths. I saw not only a talented belly writer, but — a broad Russian man, passionate, unable to imagine his life outside Russia, a stubborn state man, a populist, a cosmopolitan, an anarchist, a master of life, a gambling, risky player, a husband, a father, infinitely in love with life, which generously paid him back with mutual love. Alexei Varlamov