By 1910, following publication of Anna Karenina and War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy was the most famous writer in the world. But at what price glory? Desperate to find peace at the end of his life, away from his wife and thirteen children, as well as the press, Tolstoy makes a dramatic flight from his home.
Jay Parini’s novel is set in the last year of Tolstoy’s life and is based on journals and diaries kept by the writer, his wife, his students, his physician, and several of his children. Parini convincingly weaves together events of the period with Tolstoy’s observations. Though historical fiction, it’s meant to be read with a more contemporary perspective: that of a celebrity’s family struggling to carve their own lives out of the shadow of his. Much of the story revolves around Tolstoy’s difficult and competitive relationship with his wife—as well as with his students and daughters.
Gore Vidal described The Last Station as “one of the best historical novels written in the last twenty years,” and the book generated a certain buzz at the 2007 London International Book Fair. It’s being published simultaneously in Greece and sixteen other countries.
Read at the Readers Guide an interview of the writer to Paul Holler as well as excerpts from reviews in the Press. |