This book is written quite different from his Anna Karininan.
The is the story of the French and Russian war as told from the Russian front. At the beginning there are quite of few of the social aspects, the balls, parties, parlor visits, etc, but when it get into the war, Tolstoy really puts you there in the war. The logistics of war and wartime are laid right out there. The French were so not prepared for where their Napoleon took them. He didn't fight the war he had planned. And Alexander responded in kind. It very much came to the generals and commanders calling their own plays and battles. I much preferred Tolstoy's "War" to his "Peace". But I also liked how he wrapped up the story.
The very wimpy Pierre turns out to be the man after all. We get to see several sides of Alexander and of Napoleon. I had never read of Napoleon and so really found all that quite interesting. All in all, this is a great story and deserves to be read today and has it's place in literature today. I think it has proven and will continue to be proven a timeless epic of "War and Peace". ( )

tried to read twice and couldn't get past the names difficulty...Actually I didn't want to. I got it on cd's (51 of them) and it was a delight to have someone read this classic to me. I would highly recommend it. I'm a smart person now, but I don't get a gold star bec. it was on cd! ( )

War and Peace ( War and Peace - Vintage Classics) is, probably, a Russian classic with the highest world-wide reference ratio. Not just because it is a great read, but also because it has become a metaphor for 'difficult' literature - too long, too serious, too many characters, too many historical or philosophical digressions.

Languagehat, a brilliant American blogger, reports that he has just finished reading War and Peace (over a year since he started) - and grumbles that philosophical chapters are amateurish, unnecessary and spoil the novel.

Many desperate readers agree. Here is what Andy K from Australia writes in an Amazon.com review of War and Peace:

I have tried War and Peace several times since I was a teenager, and each time I have enjoyed it UNTIL I get to the same bit. This is the bit where Tolstoy decides it's time to give us all a little lecture (say, a mere hundred and fifty pages) on his theory of history. I think this is in an inexcusable flaw in a story, book, or epic. Worst of all, it makes poor Leo Nicholayevich into precisely the pretentious git which he didn't want to be remembered as. Because of the pretentious and boring quality of the classic War and Peace, I quit reading this book. But I felt like I had failed when I was a teenager. Now I am a mature adult and I know better: Tolstoy was being a pretentious bore.

Well, ask Tolstoy's good friend and follower Gandhi, he would agree - Tolstoy is some work. But that work helped Gandhi change himself - and the world.

A lot of writers can't help but moralize. Few are ready to admit that it may be boring for the reader. In fact, I only know one, W.Somerset Maugham, a younger contemporary of Tolstoy, who honestly advised his readers to skip the next chapter, where he was going to philosophise, if they wanted just the story. Here is what he writes in the first paragraph of Part VI of The Razor's Edge:

I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell, since for the most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worth while to write this book.

I suspect Maugham envied Chekhov for his ability to construct a gripping story without a real plot - and disguised it as critique of Russian 'verbosity' in general. Even though compactness is one of the most striking features of Chekhov's style. Maugham himself digresses into a whole chapter of criticising Chekhov for his lack of narrative in 'Ashenden', supposedly a spy thriller based on Maugham's own experience on Her (sorry - His) Majesty's secret service while trying to stop the bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917. In another chapter Maugham implies that the revolution only happened because the people who could have stopped it spent too much time talking.

I think Tolstoy also envied Chekhov for the same reason - and also criticised him. But Tolstoy hated his own 'verbosity' and worked hard to make his language compact. I agree, we Russians are famous for our 'verbosity', but, in fact, we generally hate it too. We have a huge thesaurus of hate phrases for it, including many expletives.

And Maugham is one of our favourite English writers.

A note: if you think it's not fair to pay for a book which contains hundreds of pages you know you won't read, get ECCO Press 2007 version of War and Peace translated by Andrew Bromfield (War and Peace: Original Version) - it's Tolstoy's own, abridged, 'hollywood' version of the epic novel, half the size and a different, happy ending.

A classic story of Russia's was with Napoleon.

Tiresome ( )

Yes, I did it. Say, "What?" It was quite a feat, but it was well worth it. This is one of the greatest novels of all time. ( )

Larger than life. Truly deserving of the words "epic", "classic", and "memorable"; they are not cliches in this case. I'm very happy to have found the 1938 Heritage edition in two hardcover volumes with fold-out illustrations in a used book store many years ago; it's beautiful and added to my enjoyment.

I'll spare you an attempt at summarizing the plot but not a bunch of excerpted quotes. :-)

On Accepting Fate:
"While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth – that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the other was warming…
He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did not think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The harder his position became and the more terrible the future, the more independent of that position in which he found himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories and imaginings that came to him."

On Children:
"How strange, how extraordinary, how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son about whom she used to have quarrels with the too-indulgent count, that son who had first learned to say ‘pear’ and then ‘granny’, that this son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man’s work on his own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages, showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son’s growth towards manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the little creature who live somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son and officer, that, judging by this letter, he now was."

On Death:
“…Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all.”

"…What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What Power governs it all?
There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: ‘You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease asking.’ But dying was also dreadful."

On Detachment:
"Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in contact with, particularly with man – not any particular man, but those with whom he happened to be. He love his dog, his comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt that in spite of Karataev’s affectionate tenderness for him (by which he unconsciously gave Pierre’s spiritual life its due), he would not have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to feel in the same way towards Karataev."

On Enlightenment:
"Only looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the entrance to the Arbat square an immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long, uplifted tail, shone the enormous comet of 1812 – the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre however that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly – like an arrow piercing the earth – to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect – shining and displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating starts. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life."

On Happiness:
“…I was then wiser and had more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is worth understanding in life, because…because I was happy.”

On Man's limitations:
"A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely, says that the bee gathers pollen-dust to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and see in this the purpose of the bee’s existence. Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.
All that is accessible to man, is the relation of the life of the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and nations"

On Inviduality and the Russian character:
'"The other was that vague and quite Russian feeling of contempt for everything conventional, artificial, and human – for everything the majority of men regard as the greatest good in the world. … It was the feeling that induces a volunteer-recruit to spend his last penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for no apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money he possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions which from an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it were, his personal power and strength, affirming the existence of a higher, non-human, criterion of life."

"There was a new feature in Pierre’s relations with Willarski, with the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, which gained for him the general goodwill. This was his acknowledgement of the impossibility of changing a man’s convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling and seeing things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre, now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men’s opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an amused and gentle smile."

On living in the now:
"‘Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a criminal,’ came into Pierre’s head, ‘and from their point of view they were right, as were those too who canonised him and died a martyr’s death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive – live: tomorrow you’ll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in comparison with eternity."

On Love of Fellow Man:
"Yes – love,” he thought again quite clearly. “But not love which loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason, but the love which I – while dying – first experienced when I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced the feeling of love which is the very essence of the soul and does not require and object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one’s neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love…”

On Meaninglessness:
"Above him there was now nothing but the sky – the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds gliding slowly across it. ‘How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all as I ran,’ thought Prince Andrew – ‘not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty, infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!…’ …
Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood, suffering and the nearness of death, aroused in him. Looking into Napoleon’s eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain."

"‘What for? Why? What is going on in the world?’ he would ask himself in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to reflect anew on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by experience that there were no answers to these questions he made haste to turn away from them…
He had the unfortunate capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it. Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity…
Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when entrenched under the enemy’s fire, if they have nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. “Nothing is trivial, and nothing is important, it’s all the same – only to save oneself from it as best one can,” thought Pierre. “Only not to see it, that dreadful it!”"

On old age:
"The old lady’s condition was understood by the whole household though no one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary, was the common understanding of her condition expressed.
But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole self, that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be pitied. “Memento mori,” said these glances.
Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household and the little children, failed to understand this and avoided her."

On oneness:
"Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own insignificance, aware of being a drop in that ocean of men, and yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that enormous whole."

On sorrow:
"'You talk of schools,” he went on, crooking a finger, “education and so forth; that is, you want to raise him” (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his cap) “from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him my means….I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I can’t sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can’t help thinking…'"

"She thought of only one thing, her sorrow, which after the break caused by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray.
After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh. Towards midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full moon began to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist began to rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.
Pictures of her near past – her father’s illness and last moments – rose one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now lingered over these images, repelling with horror only the last one, the picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate even in imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and in such detail that they seemed now present, now past and now future."

On violence:
"'But in these great endeavors we are gravely hampered by the political institutions of today. What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor revolutions, overthrow everything, repel by force?…No! We are very far from that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no violence.'"

On virtue:
"Countess Mary’s soul always strove towards the infinite, the eternal and the absolute, and could therefore never be at peace."

On war:
"In the rearguard Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions, kept up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd dam where for so many years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in his taselled cap peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the watering-can, on that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty with flour whitening their carts - on that narrow dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under horses’ hoofs and between the wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying and killing one another, only to move on a few steps and be killed themselves in the same way."

"To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England’s policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenberg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them. …
To us, the wish or objection of this or that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon’s refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of Oldenberg; for had he not wished to serve, and had a second, third, and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon’s army and the war could not have occurred."

"Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth under these immeasurably starry heavens? Can it be possible that in the midst of this entrancing Nature, feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the passion for exterminating their fellows, can endure in the souls of men? All that is unkind in the hearts of men ought, one would think, to vanish at the touch of Nature, that most direct expression of beauty and goodness." (actually from Tolstoy's "The Raid", but it's quoted in the notes in my edition of War and Peace)

“Not take prisoners,” Prince Andrew continued. “That by itself would quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have played at war – that’s what’s vile! We play at magnanimity and sensibility and all that stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kind-hearted that she can’t look at blood, but enjoys the calf being served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It’s all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they humbugged us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people’s houses, issue false paper money, and worst of all they kill my children and my father, and then talk of rules of war and magnanimity to foes! Take no prisoners, but kill and be killed! …
War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous. The military calling is the most highly honored.
But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a country’s inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery and drunkenness. And in spite of all that it is the highest class, respected by everyone.”

On the "younger generation", and the fallacies the "older generation" perceives:
"…In our days,” continued Vera – mentioning ‘our days’ as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of ‘our days’ and that human characteristics change with the times – “in our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted often stifles real feeling in her…” ( )

Fancy pants dribble about high society flakes and incompetent generals. Sure there is more to it than that, but after 400 pages I'm irritated that I managed to guilt myself into reading 399 pages too many. ( )

A must-read classic of all times. ( )

War and Peace is one of those strangely priveleged books that will be read not because of what it depicts but because what it is. It is hard to think of a longer book than this in the English language (although of course, this is a Russian novel) - and even if there is something longer, no one will care because War and Peace is the benchmark! The ultimate in long works. And this is both to its benefit and its loss, because whilst many people will read it because its long and thus well known - just as many will avoid it, likewise because it is so long.

I started reading the book with no other preconception about it than its length, and ultimately I was surprised by the power of the story, the insights of Tolstoy and what I learned about Napoleon's abortive invasion of Russia. Here was an episode of history we covered in one lesson in school, wrapped up with the playing of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. And suddenly it was all so much more real. I still remember the picture in the school text book of Napoleon's retreat from Russia, but had you asked me questions on the subject I would have found it hard to dredge up much good information. But in War and Peace you live the whole thing from the build up to war in 1805 to the eventual retreat of Napoleon and a little of how Russia chabged after this.

There is love interest, plenty of action, amusing side stories, and also some most wonderful observations on the society of the day (which are often still pertinant today). And interspersing the whole thing, there are author asides on the nature of actors in history, and here I was suprised to find how mcuh I agreed with and enjoyed Tolstoy's insights.

To Tolstoy, the historian who focuses on the geniuses of history falls into error, because history is more like a tide, sweeping the genius along like everyone else. This is a powerful antidote to many a book I have read that has ruined itself by allowing characters to act as though they and they alone can turn the whole course of history through some act that they alone determine (I think of my criticism of Orson Scott Card's "Empire" here, but there are many others). I found this book insightful and refreshing.

But even though I very much enjoyed this work, and would thoroughly recommend reading it - I also have to criticsie the very slow start. The book is so huge that the cast of characters is likewise enormous. Tolstoy spends a long time introducing the characters, and even though there is some storyline in that section, it was tough going and many a reader no doubt will give up before the really exciting stuff gets going. This is a great pity, but other than encouraging anyone to persevere, there is little that can be done to help this. ( )

Completing War and Peace was a lifelong goal that I have finally accomplished. After finishing the book and mentally digesting it, I really wish I could read it in the original Russian. While the translation I used was adequate, I think nuances of the story were literally lost in translation.

The most challenging part of reading War and Peace is keeping the 500+ characters straight. The task is made more difficult in that Tolstoy often varies names for the same person in different contexts. For example, one character is simply "Rostov" in the first third of the book, but then is referred to as "Nikolay" for the remainder. I'd recommend creating a "cheat sheet" as you go along. The quicker the main characters are cemented in your mind, the easier it will be to enjoy the story.

One theme played throughout is the imbalance of power between male and female characters. It only takes a few chapters to realize who wears the "porta" in these families. Most of the male characters have a somewhat thin masculine facade. Once placed in the middle of a losing war, they fall apart and scatter, abandoning their posts. Of course, we need to keep in mind that most of the commanders were only in their late teens, barely no longer children. It's the women that wield the power in War and Peace. Through their social interactions, they manipulate and arrange entire empires. They control their families through the blind obedience offered them as matriarchs and use it to their advantage.

Some characters may be perceived differently if the work is read in its original language and in the context of the century in which they were written. For example, Rostov's "man crush" on the Tsar evolves from admiration to an almost homosexual fascination. Rostov remains a tormented character throughout the book. His decline culminates in a loss of a small fortune in gambling debts to his rival which loses his favor with the one person that had remained faithful to him; his father.

Tolstoy spent much of his life in pursuit of religious meaning, authoring religious works later in life. His internal conflict is readily apparent in Pierre's discourse with the Freemason. I was surprised by the level of detail provided regarding the society's secret rituals. Not being a Mason, I'm not sure how accurate they were but the descriptions were very thorough.

Tolstoy showed his mastery of imagery throughout War and Peace. My two favorite examples are his almost torturously detailed description of the battle of Borodino and his likening of the emptying of Moscow to a dying beehive.

The Epilogue (the final 50 pages or so) is actually a historical retrospective and a heavy philosophical treatise on history, man's perception of his place in history and his relationship to emerging scientific thought. This final section of War and Peace can stand on its own as a separate work. Incidentally, it really had no bearing on the story and was the most difficult part of the book to finish.

War and Peace was challenging but satisfying. I don't believe it could be appropriately appreciated by younger readers as it requires too much life experience to understand the depth and breadth of emotions. For an experienced reader, it remains one of the great works of literature that simply has to be read in a lifetime. ( )

I first read this when I was 17. It was much better this time - when I understood the context better. Vast book - 1926 pages in four volumes in my edition - covering a group of upper class Russian families in the early years of the 19th century, and describing the impact of Napoleon on them and on Russia. There is great writing here and some realistic characterisation - the step-son not loved as much as the others, the long-suffering girl who is so good she ends up being disliked, but there is also some dross as Tolstoy expounds his theories on free will and causes in history. Read January 2009 ( )

Make sure you read the unabridged version. The greatness of this book is not so much the adventurous plot line, as it is the philosophical reflections of the author ( )

A wonderful translation ( )

This is obviously a Russian masterpiece that is a very long engrossing tale. It is an excellent way to get insight into the Russian people's character and the hardships they endured. The characters are well developed and there is a real philosophical bent to them. They are often engaging in deep thoughts and conversations. I found the military side of things to be a bit boring, but enjoyed the characters relationships. To someone who is interested in military history as well as Russian culture this would be perfect. ( )

The... hugest book I've ever read for sure. Because of my love of Russian novels, I gave this a 4 - I love everything about that era, with the insightful descriptions of every aspect of Russian society, the complicated relationships between the characters, the all importance of the obvious 'war' half of 'w&p'... the only problem with wordy books, is I tend to forget them faster than their more concise cousins. In all fairness, I did rush through it, trying to cram 200-300 pages a day, because I hate dwelling on any one book for too long. I finished it way too quickly, and I think the next time I gather up the courage to tackle this mammoth again (yes, it's on my list of re-reads), I'll give it a good month at least of reading and thinking. A month in the summer. A summer when I'm unemployed and living away from family. And friends. And don't own any other books or internet access. Yeah, that should just about do it. ( )

Eh bien, mon prince, Genes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, des estates, de la famille Buonoparte.

so far better than i expected, took too long to read, returned to library, reread some time

Translation of Vo?ina i mir. Bibliography: p. 1456. ( )

So, no joke, I’m going to review War and Peace? Pointless? Presumptuous? Yes, so feel free to get on with reading this Great Work. Of course I highly recommend that you read War and Peace. Even if I thought it did not live up to expectations, so what? Read it and form your own judgment.

So, mainly for my own use, here’s my review. First, the fact that the book is one the Greatest of the Great Books (I mean, it’s *War and Peace*) does get in the way of just reading the book on its own terms, perhaps more than any work. But the book’s daunting length eventually cures you of that concern. Checking in at 1215 pages (including an Epilogue that is around 80 pages long), reading War and Peace is truly a marathon. I admit that at times it was a slog.

I read the new translation by Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky. From my limited research, the husband and wife seem to be generally considered as the best interpreters of Russian literature. How one judges a translation in a language one does not read is problematic, but so be it.

A short summary: In the words of Woody Allen, it involves Russia. Ha-ha. Tolstoy basically follows the lives and fates of three families, all of them rather odd. Of course, hanging over all of them is the Napoleonic War. The story swings back and forth between the home front and the battlefields. Tolstoy’s realistic depictions of battle still seem quite modern in many ways – the fog of war, the wildly mixed emotions within each man’s breast, and the suddenness of death in battle. He also depicts life of the soldiers and life of the generals.

The Rostovs are a noble family in Moscow who have hit hard times and are sliding toward disgrace. The story especially features the deeply annoying Natasha – what a helpless little drama queen! She moves from one crisis to the next, most of them either of her own making or exacerbated by her. Her brother Nikolai tries to perform heroic feats in battle. Little brother Petya provides the sudden tragedy. Over-protected Ma Ma provides the road to poverty with her witless insistence on living her normal life of luxury. The Rostoves are living examples of the need of proper Russian nobles to maintain appearances and of the men to be seen to protect the women (alas, not all Russian nobles are ‘proper’).

We meet Pierre Bezukhov in the books first pages at a fancy party in comparatively racy Petersburg. He is then and remains always extraordinarily introspective and entirely susceptible to the needs of others. He begins quite poor, but his father the count acknowledges his paternity on his death bed. The count dies and suddenly Pierre is the wealthiest man in town. He also moves from one thing to the next, but never by half-measures; no dabbler is he. He marries disastrously (this wife later dies, during the occupation of Moscow, if memory serves). He joins and devotes himself to the Freemasons. He seeks to live a moral life despite his riches.

Pierre always seems stunned like a duck that has been struck upon the head. ‘Dazed and confused’ might be going it a bit too far, but it gives the general idea. He is a space cadet. He is odd. He seeks out the Borodino battlefield and wonders around it. He narrowly misses being killed. At one point, Pierre ludicrously plans to assassinate Napoleon. Later during the occupation of Moscow, he is taken captive where he meets Karataev, a peasant with more sense than Pierre has ever experienced among the nobility. Well-rounded and grounded is Karataev and some of it rubs off on Pierre. He is eventually freed, falls in love with Natasha, and marries her in the first Epilogue – a fairy tale ending that Tolstoy somehow makes seem inevitable and necessary to the reader and thus acceptable.

The Bolokhonsky’s are a noble family of some military notoriety and now ensconced at their Bald Hills Estate. At one time, son Andrei is to marry Natasha Rostov, but the demands of Andrei’s strange father manage to chill that idea (and then Natasha totally destroys it with an ill-conceived and idiotic fling). When war comes, Andrei signs on as aide-de-camp to Kutuzov. Andrei is intoxicated with the idea of glory and honor. He does lead an heroic charge and later organizes an artillery squadron’s even more heroic stand, but Andrei is seriously wounded. His near-death experience sends him spiraling downward. His love for Natasha flares up again, but then he is mortally wounded. Carried home, Andrei dies a long and painful death in her care.

Tolstoy greatly admires the Russian general Kutuzov, who seems to have a mixed reputation among historians. He derides the ‘genius’ Napoleon. On the whole, however, Tolstoy eschews the Great Man approach to history. He regards the outcome of wars as controlled by great forces. In the second epilogue (Yes, there are really two epilogues!), Tolstoy makes it clear that he believes a divine power is the moving force behind man’s actions. He seems not mean, however, that this control occurs in a specifically direct way with the Big Guy with the Beard directing each step. As these things always do, the attempt to reconcile an almighty god with man’s free will becomes hopeless. Tolstoy would have done the reader a favor by leaving out the second epilogue. He should have left it, as he had developed through the course of the book, his rather fatalistic view that the great streams of history so control events that the ability of individual people to change its course is extremely limited.

I have left great swaths of the book untouched. Suffice to say that I am already beginning to think that I need to re-read the book, just a few days after rejoicing when I at last turned the final page. The book is so vast that I begin to feel that one only gets a general grasp on the first reading. ( )

i need the one for ADD disorders

I wont sugar coat it, its a long haul but well worth it. ( )

Contemplating the penning of a review of War and Peace has caused me greater angst than any other. I look up at it from my position of literary mediocrity, feeling a sense of ‘not being up to the task’.

I start from a position of this being my first Russian classic read and my first introduction to Tolstoy. Though I do have an amateur historians interest in the 1812 Russian campaign.
The scope of the work is huge; it took me more than 300 odd pages just to get to grips with the character associations and this alone made me make a mental promise a re-read the book in a few years because I’m certain I’ll gain more from it, the second time round.

The change of narrative scope of the chapters from, the lives and deaths of individuals, to the description of battles or other historical events, to an almost non-fiction overview of events on both a vast and minute scale I found inspiring, though on occasions it caused difficulty in maintaining a fluidity of reading.

As a reader, I felt part of that insignificance, which Tolstoy seems to imbue his characters with, set against his vast historical palette.

I have learnt a great deal about Russian 19th century society, war, inhumanity, relationships and many other facets touched on in this tome and much more about how much I have to learn in a literary sense to fully appreciate or accurately critic it.

For any ‘first timer’, I would say go for it; don’t rush it and if like me afterwards you’ll have a thirst for more. ( )

Amazing in so many ways. The characters were wonderful, and the story captivating. Tolstoy's insights and discussions were a joy...I love the way his mind works: the allegories, the poetic philosophy countered by logic. I devoured it in less than 2 weeks and didn't want it to end. I found it surprisingly readable and don't think that it at all deserves the reputation for heft, and denseness that it's received. ( )

Amazing. Took me over two years to read, but who cares?