So, meine Lieben, fast and easy here you go: 12 interesting facts about Leo Tolstoy!

1. For Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy was the greatest author of all time!

2. The Tolstoys were a Russian well-known old nobility family

3. He fought the Crimean War and wrote about it later on his book Sevastopol Sketches

4. He was a pacifist, a rebel who believed in the nonviolent resistance. He was against the government (radical anarchist) after he witnessed a public execution in Paris

5. Mahatma Gandhi wrote him a letter asking for advice

6. His book The Kingdom of God is within you not only had a deep influence on Gandhi but also on Martin Luther King, Jr.

7. As an anarchist, is it not obvious that he was being watched by the Russian secret service?

8. ANNA KARENINA SPOILER! he also died at a train station

9. even though he was a strong anti-government anarchist in tsarist Russia, he deeply believed in God

10. he founded 13 schools for Russian peasants as he came back to Russia from his, let’s call it: Eurotrip

11. He never finished university. According to his professors, he was “unwilling and unable to learn”

oh, and as ironic as it sounds:

12. Resurrection was his last published novel before he died (I actually started the first chapter of our book club about this particular book)

I think that’s 12 already! It is Sunday evening here in Berlin and it feels like forever since I started to write this post.

Have a nice whatever-time-you-are-reading-this-post!