Brazilian footballer made a bestseller in his homeland the story of Tolstoy

Brazilian midfielder “Atletico Mineiro” Gustavo Scarpa published on his YouTube channel a review of the story of Leo Tolstoy “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, thanks to which this work gained popularity in his homeland. This was reported by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.

After the review, the book topped Amazon’s Brazilian sales ranking, with Google searches for it up more than 70 percent from the same period last year and 300% in September compared to the previous month.

The review, published by the football player on September 2, gained more than 600,000 views on YouTube, and a fragment of the video posted on Instagram (owned by Meta, in Russia the company is recognized as extremist and banned), was viewed more than 1 million times.

"At first I couldn't believe it," Scarpa told Folha.

The footballer has been talking about books on social media since 2019. He expressed the opinion that the current response of the audience is connected, among other things, with the change of format. Previously, Scarpa published only brief comments, and now records longer videos in which he shares his thoughts and impressions about what he read. I used to write a brief summary of the subject—sometimes just a word or phrase about what I liked about the book. Now I analyze what I really understood, record more detailed videos, and people liked this idea.