Leo Tolstoy

Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian author, famous for his realistic fiction such as War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878). His writing is described to be full of provocation and irony, and written with broad and elaborately developed rhetorical devices, and Anton Chekhov once wrote: “When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature.” Tolstoy is considered one of the giants of Russian literature and he received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906, but never won, which is a major controversy. The idea and design behind the bookends is by the Swedish renowned industrial designer Jan Landqvist and the bookends are made in the small town Gnosjö in the south of Sweden. Designer: Landqvist, Jan