Product Description

In Russia's struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Greater than a historical chronicle, War and Peace is an affirmation of life itself, `a complete picture', as a contemporary reviewer put it, `of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness, their grief and humiliation'. Tolstoy gave his personal approval to this translation, published here in a new single volume edition, which includes an introduction by Henry Gifford, and Tolstoy's important essay `Some Words about War and Peace'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94152 in Books
• Published on: 1993-07-07
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 992 pages

Synopsis
This epic novel is centred on Napoleon's war with Russia. It expresses Tolstoy's view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence. Three of the characters, Natasha Rostov, Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoy's philosophy.

Customer Reviews

Still historical
You can't not give one of the world's greatest novels five stars. But you can consider how modern readers might find it. There are undoubtedly elements of what we would now call soap opera here - just as there are in Hardy, say, or Austen. Tolstoy's didactic purpose (a critique of 'modern' theories of history) waxes as the book progresses and concludes in a hundred page theoretical diatribe that - while it addresses philosophical issues that still have currency - probably won't detain many non-academic readers. This translation - now nearly 40 years old - has probably been surpassed but remains highly serviceable; realising, as it does, Tolstoy's ability to experiment with narrative postures without ever upsetting the reader's sense of 'normality'. Pierre remains one of the most fully-realised characters in fiction, while the battle scenes (especially, for my money, Schon Graben) are breathtaking pieces of writing. Tolstoy's innately aristocratic values can grate: the serfs invariably exist in a kind of Benthamite world of ignorant charm, while the author's worldly irony can create a sense that humanity barely deserves the humanist outrage that he occasionally heaps on Europe's warmongers. But this is just firing a catapult at an oil tanker. It's 'War and Peace' for goodness sake!

The best soap opera ever written!
Starting this book I thought I was going to be reading classic literature in a way that was going to be very intellectual. What I got was one of the best dramas ever written but with an epic soap opera feel. If you can make it past the first two hundred pages you will love this book but getting there is hard as there are so many characters that I was very lost for a long time as to who was who and what was happening. Once I'd got past this I found I was reading a great drama about two families and the interaction that happens between them with love and war as the main events to occur. This is not highbrow literature this is great literature of a universal story about life and it doesn't get much better than this. Ignore the amount of pages and enjoy this for what it is epic drama!

THE novel
Obviously there has been a lot said about this book, and taken together with its sheer size, this makes it a slightly daunting adventure. It took me about 3 months to get through, with a few breaks thrown in, but I enjoyed it from cover to cover.
While you might think that no book can merit 1500 pages, Tolstoy dispels this idea. No page is wasted - it really does put a lot of contemporary fiction to shame.
The story covers the period 1805-1820, looking at Napoleon's invasion and retreat from Russia. It's main concerns are history and its representation (philosophically expounded upon in the final 50 pages, where all the hints and asides of the previous 1450 are brought together into one huge rebuke of humanity's attitude to itself and its past).
The narrative covers the love lives of an intricately linked cast of characters as they flit in and out of the war with France, and Tolstoy proves adept at portraying both the grand and the menial in equally brilliant flourishes.
If you have read and enjoyed other Russian novels, you'll need to psyche yourself up and go in for this one at some point or other. My advice is not to delay. It's a rewarding, absorbing read...and even the sort of mini-achievement in our own lives that Tolstoy might have recognised.