Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born into the Russian aristocracy, spent his youth in aimless dissolution, and joined the army to escape his gambling debts. Sevastopol Tales helped to establish his fame as a writer in the 1850s. The war transformed him into a passionate pacifist and social agitator. He started schools for the recently emancipated serfs of Russia, and published a number of masterpieces, most famously the long novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Living in retirement on his ancestral estate, he became a near-messianic figure, both lauded and persecuted by the Russian authorities. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prizes in Literature and Peace, but never won.

Nicolas Pasternak Slater is the nephew of novelist Boris Pasternak. After retiring from his career as a doctor he turned to translation, and has published several highly praised versions of great Russian authors, including Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Chekhov.