The Tolstoy Estate, Steven Conte
The Tolstoy Estate, Steven Conte
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The Tolstoy Estate

Author: Steven Conte

Narrator: Ross Dwyer

Unabridged: 10 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 09/21/2020


Synopsis

Epic in scope, ambitious and astonishingly good, The Tolstoy Estate proclaims Steven Conte as one of Australia's finest writers.
From the winner of the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Award, Steven Conte, comes a powerful, densely rich and deeply affecting novel of love, war and literature'Grave, moving, engaging ... full of the flash and fire of dramatic incident, but also full of real feeling, humour and poignancy, and equipped with plenty of panache ... It deserves the widest possible readership.' The Saturday PaperIn the first year of the doomed German invasion of Russia in WWII, a German military doctor, Paul Bauer, is assigned to establish a field hospital at Yasnaya Polyana - the former grand estate of Count Leo Tolstoy, the author of the classic War and Peace. There he encounters a hostile aristocratic Russian woman, Katerina Trubetzkaya, a writer who has been left in charge of the estate. But even as a tentative friendship develops between them, Bauer's hostile and arrogant commanding officer, Julius Metz, becomes erratic and unhinged as the war turns against the Germans. Over the course of six weeks, in the terrible winter of 1941, everything starts to unravel...From the critically acclaimed and award-winning author, Steven Conte, The Tolstoy Estate is ambitious, accomplished and astonishingly good: an engrossing, intense and compelling exploration of the horror and brutality of conflict, and the moral, emotional, physical and intellectual limits that people reach in war time. It is also a poignant, bittersweet love story - and, most movingly, a novel that explores the notion that literature can still be a potent force for good in our world.Shortlisted for the 2021 Walter Scott PrizeShortlisted for the Age Book of the Year Award 2021Longlisted for the 2021 ARA Historical Novel PrizeLonglisted for the 2021 Colin Roderick Award LonglistLonglisted for the 2021 Indie Book Awards'Breathtaking ... an intelligent cinematic blockbuster. celebrating the power of literature to dissolve barriers and forge connections.' The West Australian 'Reading a book that is such a complete world, evoked in such fine detail, is almost wickedly satisfying ... Elegant, intelligent, utterly engrossing and immersive ... He reminds us that travel is always possible in the imagination even when reality goes dark and that literature always leads us towards the light.' Caroline Baum'Steven Conte has written a sweeping historical saga spanning the second world WAR and the frigid decades of PEACE that followed; an essential novel about essential things - love's triumphs and failures, the redoubtable human spirit, and the power of literary art itself. Tolstoy, of course, is at the novel's heart, and in its very soul.' Luke Slattery, author, journalist, Books Editor of Australian Financial Review'A riveting story of war, love and literature - Conte's prose does not miss a beat.' Jane Gleeson-White, award-winning author of Classics and Double Entry

About Steven Conte

Steven Conte's debut novel, The Zookeeper's War, won the inaugural Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book and for the 2007 Christina Stead Award for Fiction. The novel was published in the UK and Ireland and translated into Spanish. His second novel, The Tolstoy Estate was shortlisted for the 2021 Walter Scott Prize, the Age Book of the Year Award 2021, and longlisted for the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize, the 2021 Colin Roderick Award and the 2021 Indie Book Awards.For more information visit stevenconte.com


Reviews

Goodreads review by Katie on December 20, 2021

Maybe 4.5. I really enjoyed this one – cleverly written, with fantastic characterisation and some really moving moments. I highly recommend it.......more

Goodreads review by Cass on August 22, 2020

My advanced copy of The Tolstoy Estate (Fourth Estate Harper Collins 2020) arrived with this emblazoned on the cover: ‘A Novel for People Who Still Believe in the Saving Grace of Literature in Dark Times’. We are certainly in dark times now in this Covid world, and the novel is set in the dark times......more

Goodreads review by Theresa on September 01, 2020

This was an exceptionally good novel. It’s the story of a German medical unit that has set up their hospital on the grounds of Tolstoy’s Estate in the middle of the Russian winter of 1941. The novel spans six weeks although in a stylistic twist, the author gives us the ending about half way through......more

Goodreads review by Lina on May 31, 2022

What an amazing and absorbing book this is to read. Developed, interesting and diverse characters throughout that jump out of the pages! An expansive time frame dealing with the invasion of Russia by Germany and the aftermath of the war. The trauma of war is dealt with on many fronts, emotionally, p......more

Goodreads review by Alan on September 19, 2021

Superb! The best book I've read this year and that includes other great books like Shuggie Bain, American Dirt and The Lying Life of Adults. What makes this book so good and sets it apart from so many others, I think, is the author relies heavily on shaping the characters through what they say i.e.......more