Reviews

Tolstoy by A.N. Wilson

veloskyraptor's review

My library book has a misprint and is missing a huge chunk of text :( I have to wait till I can get another copy.

ellwoo's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

pierreikonnikov's review

3.0

Never get a Dickensian to write about the Russians. Wilson is far too cynical, far too ironic, and like Dickens far too focused on childhood to penetrate into Tolstoy. A biographer does not need to love or even like their subject, but they do need to revere them; Wilson reveres the text but not the man, and so this descends at its worst into cod-Freudian attacks on Tolstoy that simply don't make for interesting reading. Tolstoy is the best author ever, and one of the most important popular religious figures of the last 500 years- Wilson does not understand the latter and does not explain the former particularly well.