Love and Hatred: The Stormy Marriage of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy
by: William L. Shirer

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 400 pages. In 1897 Tolstoy wrote his daughter Tonya, explaining his opposition to her desired marriage: "As far as love is concerned, it's an ignoble and unhealthy sentiment-I would not have opened my door to it." Perhaps this passage reflects the turbulent marriage of Leo and Sonya-first the promise of love and then disillusionment. Certainly, there was a love of sorts-their marriage lasted 48 years and brought forth 13 children-but the later half of the marriage was soured by acrimony, secrecy, and great emotional wounding. The greatest division came with the battle over the rights to Tolstoy's works. Sonya finally got sole possession, outliving Leo by nine years and plagued by the thought that she had been wrong for her genius husband. In intimate and scrupulous detail often drawn directly from Leo and Sonya's diaries, Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) has profiled the disintegration of a marriage. Clean copy.