Aleksei Tolstoy author page

Aleksei Tolstoy biography

Aleksei (Aleksey) Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian and Soviet writer whose work included historical fiction, science fiction, and books for young readers. In English translation he is known for the science-fiction novel Aelita (1923) and for The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (also published in English as The Garin Death Ray), which first appeared in the 1920s.

For children, Tolstoy wrote The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino (1936), a retelling inspired by Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio. His major long-form historical fiction includes the trilogy The Road to Calvary and the historical novel Peter the First.

Tolstoy received the Stalin Prize in 1941 for Peter the First, and he received the Stalin Prize in 1943 for The Road to Calvary.