French Literature Reviews - 2026

V. Pozner, Tolstoy is Dead
Writers: Biography, Letters and Memoirs

Vladimir Pozner, Tolstoy is Dead

Paris: Christian Bourgois, 2010, 224 p.

• ISBN: 978-2-267-02068-7
• Price: 16 €

Publisher's overview:

In November 1910, the small town of Astapovo was in a frenzy. Tolstoy, who had fled his family estate and was traveling under an assumed name, fell ill along the way and had to stop at the station master's house. News spread rapidly. Newspapers from Moscow and later from the provinces sent correspondents who gathered information, questioned the doctors, and telegraphed their articles. The situation evolved hour by hour. Telegrams from Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra, kept her mother informed of the writer's state of health.

Drawing on dispatches, personal accounts, letters, and other writings that he collected and translated, Vladimir Pozner meticulously reconstructed the atmosphere surrounding Tolstoy's final days.

Preface by Linda Lê

Vladimir Pozner reconstructs the final days of Leo Tolstoy in the small town of Astapovo through a collection of period dispatches, personal accounts, and letters. The work focuses on the intense media attention surrounding the writer's illness and death, detailing the reports sent by correspondents and the communications exchanged by family members. By gathering and translating these diverse documentary sources, the volume evokes the atmosphere surrounding Tolstoy's final days.

Readers interested in biographical accounts of nineteenth-century Russian literature and the documentation of historical events may find this study relevant. The text includes a preface by Linda Lê, providing introductory framing for Pozner's archival assembly of dispatches, letters, and contemporary writings.