Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, was a Russian writer of realist fiction and theoretical essays. His works War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent, in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, a peak of realist novel.
Tolstoy's further talents as essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer made him the most powerful member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family. His literal interpretation of the moral teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later on life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a deep impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's best novelists.