Aleksei Tolstoy author page

Aleksei Tolstoy biography

Aleksei Tolstoy is the English spelling often used for Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, a Russian and Soviet writer whose work included fiction for adults and children. He wrote novels, short stories, plays and poetry, and is separate from Leo Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace.

His books for younger readers include Nikita’s Childhood and The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino. The Golden Key, first published in 1936, reworked Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio into a Russian children’s story about the wooden puppet Buratino.

Tolstoy is also credited on English-language children’s editions of The Gigantic Turnip, a retelling of the traditional Russian cumulative tale about a family, animals and a large turnip that cannot be pulled from the ground without everyone’s help.

His writing for adults included the science-fiction novels Aelita and The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin, as well as the historical novel Peter the First. The first English edition of The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino was published by Hutchinson’s Books for Young People in 1947.