Winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for his debut novel, The Zookeeper’s War, Steven Conte returns to World War II for his stunning new book, The Tolstoy Estate. It is 1941 and Hitler has repeated Napoleon’s fatal misstep of invading Russia. In winter. A German medical unit find themselves quartered at Yasnaya Polyana, the ancestral estate of Tolstoy, where surgeon Paul Bauer becomes enthralled by its Director and the legacy of the great Tolstoy that surrounds them. An epic, ambitious tale of love, war and literature.

Chaired by Ashley Hay