He didn’t want a Nobel Prize

A Nobel Prize would be a great honor for many writers around the world. Leo Tolstoy was an exception to this rule. He was never given a chance to win the Nobel Prize despite being one of the finest writers of all time. He was also the only candidate who subtly requested that his name be removed and to decline the $100,000 prize

Many of Tolstoy's supporters were dissatisfied when the French poet Rene Sully-Prudhomme was named the first Nobel Prize laureate in 1901. Tolstoy was absent from the list of nominees for a number of years. The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences presented an application in 1906 in favor of the author's nomination. Leo Tolstoy requested that his Finnish translator, Arvid Jarnefelt, remove his name from the list of nominees after having a rumor that he should get the Nobel Prize. He expressed how painful it would be to have to decline the reward if he won.

Years later, when the public was upset once more that he had not been nominated, Tolstoy wrote: "First, it has saved me the predicament of managing so much money, because such money, in my opinion, only brings evil. Secondly, I felt very honored to receive such sympathy from people I have not even met."