A superb short work. (Paradigm Explorer)Liza Knapp has given us the ideal introduction to Tolstoy a marvellous synthesis and critique that takes his ideas and philosophy as seriously as his novels. Brilliantly written and useful. (Jay Parini, author of The Last Station)Dazzling. Compelling. Moving! Knapp brilliantly illuminates the inseparability of Tolstoys art and thought and how a cherished childhood game inspired both. (Robin Feuer Miller, Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, Brandeis University)

War and Peace and Anna Karenina are widely recognised as two of the greatest novels ever written. Their author, Leo Tolstoy, has been honoured as the father of the modern war story; as an innovator in psychological prose and forerunner of stream of consciousness; and as a genius at using fiction to reveal the mysteries of love and death. At the time of his death in 1910, Tolstoy was known the world over as both a great writer and as a merciless critic of institutions that perpetrated, bred, or tolerated injustice and violence in any form. 

Yet among literary critics and rival writers, it has become a commonplace to disparage Tolstoy's