War and Peace
4.3
(1.9K)
Leo Tolstoy
From Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the best-selling, award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov, comes a brilliant, engaging, and eminently readable translation of Leo Tolstoy’s master epic. • Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadWar 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.Pevear and Volokhonsky have brought us this classic novel in a translation remarkable for its fidelity to Tolstoy’s style and cadence and for its energetic, accessible prose.
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"5 stars! a classic tale about the napoleonic wars! It was all fantastic but I wasn’t a fan of the added theorizing towards the last epilogues. I’m used to them (as Tolstoy is my fav author.) but it felt a bit much. it’s still a wonderful read. the characters are interesting and fascinating and I love learning more about the napoleonic wars. it was a great historical fiction story! 🥰"
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Marina
"How to review one of the greatest novels ever written? All I can say is some classics are every bit as good as they're cracked up to be. What I didn't expect was the sudden flashes of ironic humor, e.g. "Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered". The insights into the emotions of a teenage girl at her first dance, a young soldier who idolizes his sovereign, an idealist leaping enthusiastically into every fad and growing disillusioned, a cynic disgusted with his life...until just before he loses it; these are what will stick with me.<br/><br/>For more of our thoughts on War and Peace, see the Evanston Public Library's War and Peace blog, http://missionimpossiblewarandpeace.wordpress.com/<br/><br/><br/><br/>"
Lesley Williams
"too long"
madison
"An excellent translation of a great book."
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Mitch Ratcliffe
"Well, my own personal hell is over. I have finally finished this damn book. Admittedly, I don't think I remember a thing about the second epilogue - my brain just shut off during Tolstoy's endless theorizing. My love/hate relationship with this book goes like the: Love - anything including the mind boggling quantity of main characters. Hate - everything else. Tolstoy goes on for hundreds of pages about military history, math and his own rants about Napoleon. And despite his tendency to over explain everything, when one of the characters dies (Helene), you just get one small paragraph! Basically, it went like this: Helene died, back to my rant about any other subject. I can not ever recommend this to anyone no matter how masochistic they may be feeling. Just watch the 6 hour BBC mini series. It will save you the frustration of reading this chore of a novel which inexplicably seems to be beloved by almost everyone. Maybe they are just so proud to have finished it that they can't bear not to agree that this is great literature!"
"So I just read Book Eight (1811-1812) that the musical "Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812" is based off of. It's only about 70 pages but wow does it pack a lot in to those few chapters!! And while I hardly read an sort of majority of this massive tome, I did really love it. Tolstoy really captures the emotional and marital problems that have plagued humanity since long before 1812, but in a way that acknowledges the intrinsic failure while still making the reader understand why we do what we do. It almost (key word: almost) makes me want to tackle the rest, but I'll hold off for now!!"
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Allie Peduto
"Those last 30 pages though...."
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Derek Boemler
"Amazing read! Easier and faster than I anticipated. Tolstoy's prose is delightful and the themes imbedded in the text are not as obscure or as complicated as, say, Dostoyevsky. It's an immersive journey to a different place and a different time, where people are still people, and sometimes they do things that don't make sense. There's romance, mystery, war, death, uncertainty; something for everyone. Highly recommend. "
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Afton Forsberg
"It's a pretty good book, but very lengthy. Be prepared to struggle for the motivation to keep reading, and maybe take breaks for other books when you get bored."
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Rilke
