In this biography of Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, A.N. Wilson narrates the drama of the writers life: his childhood of aristocratic privilege but emotional deprivation, his discovery of his literary genius after aimless years of gambling and womanizing, and his increasingly disastrous marriage. Wilson traces the roots of Tolstoys art to his relationship with God, with women, and with Russia, and breaks new ground in re-creating the world that shaped the great novelists life and art-the turmoil of ideas and politics in nineteenth-century Russia and the incredible literary renaissance that made Tolstoys work possible.