Leo Tolstoy - a free man

Dozens of memoirs have been written about Leo Tolstoy, including memories of his closest relatives, and the smallest details of his biography are reflected in hundreds of letters and diary entries of his contemporaries. Nevertheless, his life remains a mystery. How did a «trivial little man», who did not receive a systematic education, become a great writer and philosopher? What did his «spiritual upheaval» mean? What prompted him to renounce property and literary rights? Why was he excommunicated from the Church? What are the true reasons for several attempts to leave his home? Why did he go to Optina Pustyn before his death? Writer and journalist, winner of the literary prize «Big Book» Pavel Basinsky summarizes his many years of search for the «true Tolstoy» in a book based on extensive documentary material, from which the reader will learn why Tolstoy sold his ancestral home, why he learned Greek in a month and a half at an advanced age, how he saved dozens of starving people, why he did not like the «Tolstoyans», and why he rewrote his will six times... In short, this is a complete biography of a literary genius in a small format.