The Last Station. A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year; Canongate, 2007

1910. Anna Karenina and War and Peace have made Leo Tolstoy the world’s most famous author. But fame comes at a price.

In the tumultuous final year of his life, Tolstoy is desperate to find respite, so leaves his large family and the hounding press behind and heads into the wilderness. Too ill to venture beyond the tiny station of Astapovo, he believes his last days will pass in peaceful isolation. But the battle for Tolstoy’s soul will not be so simple.