Michael Katz is the C.V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and Eastern European Studies at Middlebury College. He is the author of two previous books on Russian literature and the translator of more than a dozen Russian novels into English, including major works by Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Jabotinsky, and S. Ansky.

“Fictive words with the bite of reality to them were weapons of choice not only for Tolstoy, but for his wife and children. In this fascinating assemblage of stories and counterstories against one of the late great tales, Michael Katz shows us the family fighting back.”—Caryl Emerson, A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University

Michael Katz is the C.V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and Eastern European Studies at Middlebury College. He is the author of two previous books on Russian literature and the translator of more than a dozen Russian novels into English, including major works by Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Jabotinsky, and S. Ansky.

“Fictive words with the bite of reality to them were weapons of choice not only for Tolstoy, but for his wife and children. In this fascinating assemblage of stories and counterstories against one of the late great tales, Michael Katz shows us the family fighting back.”—Caryl Emerson, A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University

Michael Katz is the C.V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and Eastern European Studies at Middlebury College. He is the author of two previous books on Russian literature and the translator of more than a dozen Russian novels into English, including major works by Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Jabotinsky, and S. Ansky.

“Fictive words with the bite of reality to them were weapons of choice not only for Tolstoy, but for his wife and children. In this fascinating assemblage of stories and counterstories against one of the late great tales, Michael Katz shows us the family fighting back.”—Caryl Emerson, A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University