"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." - Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born today in 1828. I’ve always had a fascination with Russian literature (likely related to the fact that my parents named me after Dr. Zhivago’s love interest in Boris Pasternak’s novel) but Tolstoy has been hailed as one of the greatest novelists of all time.

Of course he’s best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but he also wrote many essays and novellas. Writers from Dostoevsky and Flaubert to Virginia Woolf and have praised his writing talent, so in honor of one of the great masters, check out some of his masterpieces – or the biographies written about him:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Kareninaby Leo Tolstoy

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy: A Biography by A.N. Wilson

Tolstoy by Henri Troyat (translated by Nancy Amphoux)