Leo Tolstoy

Commonly cited as one of the greatest authors ever, Tolstoy was a 19th century Russian most famous for his works "War and Peace."(1869) and "Anna Karenina." (1878) among many other great works of literature. He also wrote many profound essays, a lot of which revolved around Christianity.

Leo Tolstoy or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist fiction. Tolstoy's further talents as essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer made him the most influential member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.