'In 1862, Sonya Tolstoy married the greatest author the world has ever known, Leo Tolstoy. For forty-eight years they shared their lives in a union that was at once passionate, collegial and combative. Sixteen years younger than her husband, Sonya bore him thirteen children and worked for years as his copyist, rewriting countless drafts of his timeless novels. Both were mercurial and passionate personalities and, towards his end, Tolstoy deserted her.
In War & Peace and Sonya, Russian scholar Judith Armstrong tells Sonya's own story exploring their devotion and ambivalence to one another, their passion for great literature and the powers of the imagination, and showing us just how remarkably true to life fiction Judith Armstrong can be.' (Publisher's website)
Author's note: I worked from the diaries of Sonya Tolstoy in both the original Russian and the translation made by Cathy Porter; and from those of Lev Tolstoy in the original and the translation made by R. F. Christian.
The fictional works of Tolstoy were also consulted in both the original and in various translated versions. The quotations in the text of my novel are my own except in a very few cases when the orginal was unavailable.
