Russian short-story writer, essayist, and novelist, who established her fame in the 1980s as one of the most original voices in Russian fiction. Tatiana Tolstaya writes of ordinary people, but her complex style is far from conventional, relying on impressionistic detail, colorful images, irony, exclamations, and multilayered narrative techniques. Her work has often been classified as a Russian example of magic realism, but she also draws on Gogolian realism and the literary avant-garde of Andrey Bely and Isaak Babel.

"Russian writers and thinkers have often called the "Russian soul" female, contrasting it to the rational, clear, dry, active, well-defined soul of the Western man. The West, in fact, often refuses to speak about the "soul" at all, insofar as it applies to a people or a culture." (in Pushkin's Children, trans. by Jamey Gambrell, 2003)

Tatiana Tolstaya was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) into a literary family. On her father's side, she is the great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy, her grandfather was the novelist Aleksei Tolstoy and grandmother the poet Natalia Krandievskaya. Mikhail Lozinsky, her maternal grandfather, was a translator.

Between 1968 and 1974, Tolstaya studied philology at Leningrad State University, receiving a degree in classical languages. While at the university, she met Andrei Lebedev; they married in 1974.

Upon graduation Tolstaya moved to Moscow, where he worked as a junior editor in the Eastern Literature Division of Nauka publishing house. At the age of thirty-two, Tolstaya decided to become a full-time writer and began to contribute stories to Leningrad and Moscow journals. 'Peters', which was published in the prestigious literary journal Novyi mir in 1986, eventually opened doors for her in the literary scene. Originally entitled 'This Wonderful Life', the melancholic story told of a nearsighted librarian, who loses his will to live a full life after a disappointment in love. Tolstaya's first collection, Na zolotom kryltse sideli (1987), appeared in the book kiosks and was sold out immediately. It was followed by Limpopo (1991), a collection of novellas, which reflected the chaotic state of Russian society during the glasnost period. Although Tolstaya's stories did not include political details, the title work commented indirectly on racism.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Tolstaya spent much time in the United States, where she took up residence with her husband, a classics professor, and taught at a number of universities. After teaching at Princeton University and at Skidmore College, returned back to Moscow. Her journalistic articles have appeared in such periodicals as the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, the New Republic, and the Guardian. In Russia Tolstaya has also co-hosted a popular TV show called "The School for Scandal". The American indie rock band Okkervil River has taken its name from one of her short stories published in White Walls (2007).

As an essayist she has written on literature and on current events in Russia, her subjects ranging from Joseph Brodsky and Andrei Platonov to Russia’s resurrection and the prize of eggs. "It would be naive, if not silly, to think that Putin's policies can be influenced by accusing him in advance of all possible sins," Tolstaya wrote in 'The Making of Mr. Putin', originally published in The New York Review of Books (May 25, 2000), after Putin was elected president. "Now as never before there is a historic chance to carry out systemic reforms in Russia. It would be a great mistake not to try to make use of it."

As a contrast to the everyday reality she had portryed in her short stories, Tolstaya's first novel, The Slynx (2000), was a dystopian fantasy of a world which is ruled by ignorance. Tolstaya started to write the novel in 1986, in the beginning of the glasnost and perestroika programs, and finished it 14 years later. In Russia the work was received with mixed reviews, but it sold well. The protagonist, Benedikt, is a young scribe in the service of plagiarism industry, who loves books but only as objects, not as instruments of knowledge and ideas. Benedikt's friend Nikita Ivanovich is ordered to be burnt at the stake, but he manages to survive with some other dissidents the ensuing fire which gets out of control. "Ms. Tolstaya repeatedly makes the point that Benedikt and company are the ones who are the real animals," said Michiko Kakutani in his review in The New York Times (October 10, 2007). "They are the Slynx of the title, a mythical beast, waiting in the forest to pounce on innocent victims; a destroyer of reason and a threat to freedom."

Note: This page is currently under construction. (October 9, 2007)

For further reading: Russian Literature, 1995-2002: On the Threshold of the New Millennium by N.N. Shneidman (2004); Encyclopadia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Vol. 4, ed.  Steven R. Serafin (1999); Reference Guide to Russian Literature, ed.  Neil Cornwell (1998); TNT: The Explosive World of Tatyana N. Tolstaya's Fiction by Helena Goscilo (1996); World Authors 1985-1990, ed. Vineta Colby (1995); Russian Literature 1988-1994 by N.N. Shneidman (1995); 'Tat'iana Tolstaia's 'Dome of Many-Colored Glass' by Helena Goscilo, in Slavic Review, 42/2 (1988)

Selected works:

• Na zolotom kryl'tse sideli, 1987 - On the Golden Porch (tr.  Antonina W. Bouis, 1989) - Tulta ja pölyä (suom. Marja Koskinen, 1989)
• Limpopo, 1991 (published in Znamia)
• Somnambula v tumane, 1992
• Sleepwalker in a Fog, 1992 (tr.  Jamey Gambrell)
• Three Stories / Tri rasskaza, 1996 (ed.  S. Dalton-Brown)
• Liubish'- ne liubish': rasskazy, 1997
• Kys, 2000 - The Slynx (tr.  Jamey Gambrell, 2003)
• Den’: lichnoe, 2001
• Noch': rasskazy, 2002
• Izium, 2002
• Krug: rasskazy, 2003
• Pushkin's Children: Writing on Russia and Russians, 2003 (tr.  Jamey Gambrell)
• Odna, 2004
• Reka Okkervil': rasskazy, 2005
• Russkii Plakat: Izbrannoe, 2006 (ed.)
• White Walls: Collected Stories, 2007 (tr.  Antonina W. Bouis, Jamey Gambrell)