War and Peace

468 pages

English language

Published Jan. 29, 2003 by IndyPublish.com.

ISBN:
978-1-4043-4168-5
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

5 stars (1 review)

"War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count, who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind his family to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman, who intrigues both men. As Napoleon's army invades, Tolstoy vividly follows characters from diverse backgrounds - peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers - as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving - and human - figures in world literature."--BOOK JACKET

59 editions

An epic classic

5 stars

For many years, I have been working through a rather long list of literary classics in chronological order of publication. I have reached the late 1800s, and it just so happened that the start of 2021 coincided with La Guerre et la Paix, or War and Peace (1869) by Leo Tolstoy. Looking back, it seems like a completely unreasonable project for me to start the year with such a dense classic. This book spans more than 1600 pages and features more than 500 characters. Lockdown life demanded ambitious personal goal-setting, and so I did what I could to stay the course.

Every day, I opened my beautiful green paper edition of this novel and read a few short chapters. War and Peace is the historical and philosophical novel by excellence. It narrates the invasion of Russia by France, and alternates between scenes of military conflict and high society. The complex …

Subjects

  • Classic fiction
  • General & Literary Fiction
  • Classics
  • Fiction
  • Literature - Classics / Criticism