Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on August 28th, 1828, in Yasnaya Polyana — the very Russian imperial estate in which he would go on to write some of the most important novels ever written. Tolstoy narrated a great expanse of the nineteenth century, publishing his first story in 1852 and his final collection of non-fiction work in 1909. War and Peace and Anna Karenina are masterpieces of the modern novel, universal in their nuanced depictions of the search for meaning and truth in the face of inevitable suffering. 
In the words of late critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Harold Bloom, writing in his 2011 book, The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life:  &#8220;Tolstoy is a total artist of narrative, in which the art itself is nature.&#8221;
This statement, somewhat deceptive in its simplicity, contains a key to unlocking the marvels of Leo Tolstoy&#8217;s immense and enduring body of work.