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    War and Peace (Deluxe Hardbound Edition)
    War and Peace (Deluxe Hardbound Edition)
    War and Peace (Deluxe Hardbound Edition)
    Ebook2,270 pages34 hours

    War and Peace (Deluxe Hardbound Edition)

    By Leo Tolstoi

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    War and Peace is a literary masterpiece by Leo Tolstoy that explores the lives of several aristocratic families during the Napoleonic Wars. This deluxe hardbound edition features a beautifully designed cover and showcases the novel's intricate plot and complex characters. A must-have for collectors of classic literature and fans of historical fiction.

    • Features profound philosophical and existential reflections on life, death, fate, and the meaning of existence.
    • Offers timeless themes and insights into the complexities of human relationships and the impact of war on individuals and society.
    • Provides insights into the deep exploration of human psychology and social dynamics.
    • An epic tale that encompasses war, love, and politics.
    • Comes in a deluxe hardbound edition with a beautifully designed cover.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFingerprint Publishing
    Release dateOct 1, 2021
    ISBN9789354408694
    War and Peace (Deluxe Hardbound Edition)
    Author

    Leo Tolstoi

    Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in Tula, near Moscow. His parents, who both died when he was young, belonged to the Russian nobility, and to the end of his life Tolstoy remained conscious of his aristocratic status. His novels, ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Anna Karenina’ are literary classics and he is revered as one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. He died in 1910 at the age of 82.

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    Reviews for War and Peace (Deluxe Hardbound Edition)

    4.5/5

    4,264 ratings166 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This book made a profound impression on me. I bought this version recently because it received such stellar reviews.
    • 5/5
      If the philosophic concepts were not the conclusion to Tolstoy’s narrative, I would have given the book three stars as opposed to four; some being extremely outdated, while others extraordinarily beguiling! Beautifully written.
    • 2/5
      An intensely mediocre book, sliding to bad in a few places.

      I have often been told that classics are classics because they posses some characteristics which enable them to transcend their time of composition and appeal to readers across time and space. If this is true, War and Peace is not a classic.

      This book essentially seeks to deal with the period from roughly 1805-1812 and focus on the Napoleonic conflicts in Europe as well as the fortunes of a few Russian families.

      First, the stuff that I liked - The first 20% of the book is very good. Tolstoy does deft social satire and critique. The writing is compact and witty. The battle descriptions are graphic, powerful and carry a flavour of authenticity.

      Unfortunately, all of this goes rapidly downhill as the book progresses.

      My biggest problem with this book is the dominance of Tell vs Show. Tolstoy loves to Tell. He embarks on long lectures and these go on for pages and pages and get extremely tedious. There are essentially three types of lectures:

      Philosophical: These became more common in the latter half of the book and is Tolstoy musing on life, human nature, history, ethics, god etc. They can be extremely tedious.

      Historical: In these Tolstoy sums up and narrates historical events to move his story along. While these can be informative, they are very clumsily integrated into the book and therefore make the narrative more cumbersome. To make matters worse, Tolstoy starts spouting of on long rants against Napoleon and on the virtues of the Russians.

      Story Based: These are the worst. Tolstoy really does not do a good job writing character changes and transitions over long periods of time. So he resorts to character narration. For example: "X decided his life was going badly. So he listened to Y and Z. He thought deeply on their advice. He realized [Insert badly written internal monologue here]. Therefore X started doing a, b and c, and Started visiting P." These character passages in passive voice were intensely irritating and seemed to be a symptom of the authors inability to internalize his own characters and instead use them as convenient mouthpieces.


      Apart from the dominance of Tell, a major problem I faced while reading was the intensely bad dialogue and the even worse internal monologues. A significant portion of dialogue is inane and seemed to serve no purpose. This was quite puzzling for me as the dialogue in the initial parts of the book was pretty good.

      Also Tolstoy does not seem to understand the point of having an epilogue. He takes this opportunity to wax eloquent about his own rather idiotic ideas about the nature of history, how Napoleon the man had no redeeming features and how Tsar Alexander was a misunderstood genius. My favourite was when he defended the suppression of liberalism in post-1815 Europe. To him if following reason, freedom and equality had been allowed this would have made the various liberal revolutionary movements in Europe unnecessary and destroyed their potential. Therefore history governed by reason is somehow antithetical to life.

      So, to conclude, War and Peace is an unwieldy, clumsy, tedious preachy accumulation of ideas. It does not really need to be read.
    • 4/5
      Whew. I read somewhere, #tolstoytogether perhaps, that reading this one is alternately “yes, exactly!” Or “wait, what??”

      Yup. Both sublime but also rooted in so much mid-1800s Russian cultural context that flew right past; still wonderful.
    • 5/5
      That epilogue tho
    • 4/5
      I understand that the popularity of this book comes at the price of having 4 interleaved narratives - something for everyone. There's history, action, ballroom dances and philosophy. Personally I could do without the ballroom scenes and the prerequisite amount of suicide attempts but no section is overly long. I found Tolstoy thoughts on war really interesting though his contempt for Napoleon goes quite far (not that he spares the Russian generals either). The fictional parts have Pierre at its centre (with an abundance of other characters) and following him through his coming of age and adult life we see how he turns from a principled young man, through motivated searching idealist and eventually broken by his war experiences into an aimless husk letting life happen to him without opposition (god being behind every action).
    • 4/5
      The balance between tradition and reform, of the long influence of French culture and simmering Russian nationalism through the course of the Napoleonic Wars is seen through the eyes of numerous noble Russians from 1805 to the end of the French invasion in 1812. War and Peace is considered Leo Tolstoy’s greatest work as it follows the lives of youthful and idealistic Russian nobles as they attempt to find their way in society and the world during times that would be defined by one man who spanned across Europe to their doorsteps.The saga begins in the Russian Empire in 1805. When Pierre Bezuknov, Natasha Rostov, and Andrei Bolkonsky are first introduced with all their youthful ambition, despite their privileged circumstances, is to find meaning in their lives. Kind-hearted but awkward Pierre, the illegitimate son of Russia's richest man, wants to change the world for the better. The spirited Natasha is searching for true love, while handsome and gallant Andrei, frustrated with the superficiality of society, seeks a higher purpose. At the same time, the French army under Napoleon edges ever closer to Russia's borders. Natasha's older brother Nikolai joins the Imperial Russian Army immediately and matures during the war against Napoleon. Like Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, he also experiences romantic vicissitudes: despite his childhood love for his cousin Sonya, his impoverished parents insist he marry a rich bride like the superficial Julie Karagina or the religious Marya Bolkonskaya. Having begun with Napoleon's military campaign against Russia and Austria in 1805, the story concludes in 1812 after Napoleon's invasion of Russia has failed and he has retreated and withdrawn from Russian territory. The families at the center of the saga have undergone major changes and lost members, but those remaining have experienced a transformation and a new life, with new growth and new families started.The sprawling narrative that Tolstoy constructs around his characters and locations varying from Moscow, St. Petersburg, various Russian estates, and battlefields spanning Austria, Poland, and Russia is wonderful. Unfortunately it is marred by Tolstoy’s decision to lecture the reader on his view of history as opposed to other interpretations not only took me out of the book—even though half my reading is history—but allowed me to think about the characters and the narrative he was having them go through resulting me quickly finding them fools and idiots who essentially deserve all the bad things that happen to them, except Sonya who is Tolstoy’s emotional whipping horse. The introduction by Pat Conroy and the afterword by John Hockenberry in the Signet Classics edition are completely worthless and if you get this edition ignore them.War and Peace is a great book if not for Tolstoy’s narrative disrupting historical lecturing that takes your attention away from large tapestry that he created thus exposing foolishness of his characters.
    • 4/5
      ... only about 100 pages into the Ann Dunnigan translation (Signet Classics: my copy is missing its back cover, and the edges of the paper are starting to brown -- they tear easily). As usual, I find Tolstoy's writing beautifully limpid, but here so far it is hard to hold back thoughts like "do I really care 1400 pages' worth about a bunch of rich people?" I acknowledge this as a limitation of mine. Presumably Tolstoy's art will triumph over these misgivings ... it always has in the past. Yes, I know, rich people are people too.
    • 3/5
      I knew this would be a challenging read - I've been sort of building up to this by trying to read a few books based in Russia to get an idea of the cultural taste and to get used to the nickname/name structure (I never did get used to it, and am still confused). I was surprised to see how modern the language seemed considering the book was written 164 years ago (ish), Tolstoy was a very good writer and some sentences were pure poetry. Gorgeous prose, though the dialogue was a bit more dated and harder to understand why/in what context somebody would suddenly exclaim something. I couldn't get connected with any of the characters save for Pierre, who is by far the most interesting, best character in the book. His journey was fascinating, and anytime he was the subject of the narrative, the pages flew by. Some of the battle sections really reminded of the Civil War Trilogy, good and bad - no doubt the Shaara's got influence from War and Peace. The logistical parts of "soldiers marched here. soldiers ate some food. soldiers slept. orders were given" are still dull as mud, but the inner turmoil of the soldiers, the battles themselves, their outlook on life and the immediate aftermath are terrific. I could've done without the 2nd part of the Epilogue, but overall I'm pleased to have read it. I didn't enjoy it as much as many hardcore readers and enthusiasts, but I would say a successful attempt. Certainly one of the most difficult reads I've ever attempted, it did feel like homework at times, but enjoyable homework nonetheless.
    • 5/5
      There are many lists of "The 100 Best Books Ever Written," or, "Fifty Books You Should Read before You Die," and lists similar to these that show War and Peace as the number 1 best book ever. And there are other similar lists which list something else. Those latter lists are just plain wrong and not to be trusted or consulted.
      There is nothing I could say that would add to the reams of paper others have spent talking about this marvel. But I would like to suggest a couple of tricks for a person thinking about reading it or struggling a little with reading it.
      First, get a good translation of it. There are many and probably all are good, but the one that works best is one which minimizes the use of nicknames for characters and which also includes a list of characters either at the beginning of the volume or as an appendix. A "too literal" translation will tire you out and justify not completing the book.
      Second, the first 100 to 125 pages are absolutely necessary to the book but they are also the place a reader might decide that the book is boring or difficult. Ignore the impulse to quit reading! You'll be glad of those first hundred pages as you move more deeply into the plot and action.
      Third, my usual habit when reading a book is to have two or three going at once. I began reading War and Peace as I read two other books. I found that doing that made it more difficult to read War and Peace, harder to follow its storyline and to keep the characters straight and more likely to set the book aside.. So, drop anything else and read War and Peace all the way through and let the other books wait. (Anyway, the other books cannot possibly be a good as War and Peace and reading them along side W & P will make you less fond of them; they simply will not hold up to comparison).
      Fourth, read the Wikipedia article about Napoleon before you get too far into the novel. This will help understand the actual historical timeline and give you a basis for how historians view Napoleon compared to Tolstoy's views. Frankly, I think Tolstoy's views are the better of the two.
      Finally, underline, highlight, write marginal notes and keep some notes. This book is not a good one to check out from the library or attempt on an reader. And anyway, you'll want to read it again sometime later in your life. (It is one of only a half dozen that I have read three or more times, excluding, of course, the Dr. Seuss books).
    • 5/5
      I read Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" when I was in middle school at a time I was too young to really appreciate it as anything but an accomplishment that impressed my teachers at the time. And even though I read a ton of Russian novels in college, something about that early experience put me off Tolstoy... (I was definitely more of a Dostoevsky girl.)At any rate, I spent the last couple of months reading "War and Peace" and it was absolutely marvelous... I enjoyed nearly everything about it-- from the ins and outs of the family drama during peace time, to the descriptions of Napoleone's failed march into Russia to Tolstoy's musings on the nature of man and war. Overall, just an excellent book.
    • 4/5
      An epic that spans multiple intrigues of the lives of its principal characters. A story that is remembered for its immensity and scope and recommended to all of those who enjoy to read literary fiction.
    • 4/5
      Incredibly entertaining even if very long. The description of war hospitals is absolutely fabulous! Beware of old translations, use this one instead!
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed the book. I listened to the NAXOS unabridged recording, read by Neville Jason and translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. The reading is excellent. I had to get my ear accustomed at first to the Russian names and relationships. For the first few chapters I used the family charts and synopses in Wikipedia to get myself straight on who was who and who was doing what. After that I had no problem for the remainder of this long long novel.

      I had read it many years ago, probably when I was in high school ( I went through a "Big Book" stage ) but remembered it not at all.

      The story and characters are engaging. The language and discourses are reminders of a gone by age. I have to admit, the final courses engaged for a bit, but finally my attention lagged.

      There are so many gems of observation in this book which is really a novel wrapped around social discourse.

      Many of Tolstoy's observations on historians and political commentary show remarkable prescience to our current world and state of affairs.

    • 5/5
      I'm not really sure how to review this book. My copy has a brief guide to Russian naming conventions as well as a list of major characters which I referred to constantly, and they were of great assistance in following along, as are Tolstoy's incredibly short chapters. I read a surprising amount of this book just waiting for my morning ride to work.It's an easy read. It's long, but the language isn't lofty or hard to get through. The story follows several families and their lives during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. They people change as time passes and they encounter various hardships and situations. Tolstoy has a curious way of describing even passing characters in a fashion that they wind up memorable for at least a time (though I still remember the scene with the woman with over-large front teeth).The characters make the book. The back of the book highlights Natasha Rostov, Prince Andrew Bolkonsky, and Pierre Bezukhov, but there are many others that bring their own tales, such that two people might read the book in an entirely different fashion depending on which character stands out to them. Both my most loved and most detested literary figures come from this book.
    • 5/5
      'I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.'
    • 4/5
      The ending was disappointing. (Tolstoy puts up strawman after strawman to justify his theory of history.) Until then, though, it is a very interesting book, with lots of scope and engaging characters.
    • 4/5
      In 1805 Pierre Bezukhov returns to Saint Petersburg to the bedside of his dying father, and ends up inheriting Count Bezukhov’s title and all of his assets. Suddenly, he’s the most eligible (and most socially-awkward) bachelor in all of Russia. All the ladies are after him, and he is very confused, so ends up ill-advisedly marrying the seductive and manipulative Helene Kuragin, who is probably sleeping with her equally debauched brother. Whoops! Meanwhile, war is about to break out between Tsar Alexander and Emperor Napoleon, and all the young men want in on it. Pierre’s friend Prince Andrei Bolkonsky wants to go to war to get away from his very amiable, very pregnant wife. 20-year-old Nikolai Rostov of Moscow wants to go to war to prove he is an adult (and he has a huge platonic crush on Tsar Alexander). Nikolai’s best friend Boris wants to go to war because he’s broke, and in love with Nikolai’s 13-year-old sister Natasha. As is everyone else. These men are all very rich and they think war is very glamorous. Turns out, it is not.The inter-personal plot of this epic tale is quite excellent, but boy is it bogged down by both detailed descriptions of troop movements and battles, as well as Tolstoy’s personal axe-grinding against his contemporaries. It’s possible that it was insightful at the time of publication, but now, not so much. These characters though! The main characters (especially Pierre and Natasha) are mostly boring and insufferable and deserve each other. But the villains and minor characters are so delightful. Boris’ eventual wife Julie (who is only in about 10 pages of the book) is SUPER GOTH - Boris woos her by writing poetry about death and drawing her a picture of a grave. Pierre’s wife Helene is an awful person but boy does she know how to work with what she’s given. She sleeps with EVERYONE – her brother (a great villain), Pierre’s houseguest Dolokov (also a great villain), Boris (boring except for his great taste in women), a government official and a Catholic priest (playing them against each other in an elaborate plot to divorce Pierre), and dies in a botched abortion. Truly a legend. Tolstoy is not particularly great at writing women, certainly not by today’s standards, but just due to the fact that there are 600 named characters in this book, by default some of the female characters have to be unique and interesting. Good job! On the flip side from the villains is sweet Denisov, Nikolai’s mentor and Natasha’s first suitor. His only characteristics are that he is nice to everyone and he talks with a lisp and he likes to eat sausages while writing letters.
    • 5/5
      I was standing at an airport lounge as a teenager many years ago, and suddenly realised I had no books to read for my family holiday. I was a SF geek at the time (still am, but I’m reading other stuff now), but had read everything that W.H. Smiths airport bookshelf could show me. In desperation and dread I turned to the classics... I'd read Frankenstein and other English literary classics by that point, and had found all of them tedious and obsessed with melancholy and/or an absurd idealistic idea of romance. Plots were contrived and you could see them coming a mile away. Of them all, only Dickens could make me smile and identify with his caricatures, but even he stopped short of fulfilling at times. If Victorian England had truly been like all of that that, then no wonder we were so repressed and messed up today. So in desperation and partly in arrogance I picked up this weighty book. None of my peers had read it, and it's size seemed to daunt many. I thought of the smugness I'd feel in saying I'd read it, even if it had been as dry and full of itself like so many others... The next two weeks were the best holiday read of my life thus far. From a stumbling start in the opening chapter and trying to work out who the hell everyone was, I slowly and surely found my way into one of the most beautiful and compelling novels I'd ever read... Tolstoy has a way of showing the inner spirit of everyone. From the bullying cavalry-man, to Napoleon himself and above all our principle characters. How I loved that bumbling, foolish and ungainly Pierre as he grew and flowered, and the impish Natasha who could melt your heart in the first paragraph you met her. Even thinking of it now, I am touched by tender thoughts and memories, interspersed with the grief of conflict and war and the nobleness of the human spirit.But is it a perfect book? No book is perfect. War and Peace is a brilliant book that should be read and enjoyed at whatever age a person is. It truly is a book for every age and every person. Let yourself into a world that will enrapt you. And a little request: can we in 2000 stop using the phrase "is not perfect ..." when describing something. Nothing in life is perfect. No book, no movie, no age, no accomplishment, and so on. Consciously refuse to compare anything to perfection and instead just enjoy something for what it is. Comparing something to the unobtainable 'perfect' merely diminishes that something and our experience. Don't be put off by folk complaining about the philosophical bits. There isn't too much of that anyway.I reread “War and Peace” recently, in no rush and over three weeks and was amazed by its richness and the development of character. Make no mistake, this is a Russian epic and you will find few books in a lifetime of reading which are as memorable.Take Pierre for example who goes from being a young buffoon worshiping Napoleon to become someone with a much more critical view, hoping at one point for the chance of assassinating him. This development does not happen overnight! He learns from his experiences in prison and through his relationship with Platon Karateyev. At the end you are left thinking that the story is not yet over. Pierre and young Nikolai Bolkonsky, patriots both - are thinking critically about society. Exile to Siberia is definitely a possibility if they get involved in anything too radical. Pierre is just one major character in this glorious book. Start when you can but don't rush it. Literature of this quality needs time.Reasonable defenders of “War and Peace” at (one of) its current length(s) might absolutely agree with being anti-literary-flab, and simply argue that this book isn't actually flabby. For example, the "side-track stories" are not "padding" or "excess", but rather constitute the "pacing" intrinsically needed by the "content" itself- so goes a point of view which I think is more care-filled than that of a "fanboy". Take a look at vol. II, pt. 5, ch. VI (it's only a couple of pages). Natasha has accepted Prince Andrei's proposal, and has returned to Moscow to meet the prince's father and get ready to get married. She meets Marya Dmitrievna, a society dowager, who intrusively 're-assures' Natasha about "old Prince Nikolai" and his resistance to his son's getting married. A tiny moment, particularly in that nothing in the plot changes as a result of this vignette, but we are shown: the social realities that Natasha is growing to recognize and understand; and the ego-centrism, diminishing, that's still the dominant tone in her character (she really sees this man whom she loves, but she thinks she can marry and 'have' him without marrying his family and being his socially positioned and positioning wife). You see my point? The story of the story doesn't change because of this little chapter, but our alertness to what Tolstoy is showing us is colored, or deepened, or enriched, or nourished (or whatever old-fashioned metaphor you like!) by this small facet.Not sure what, in "War and Peace", some people mean by "cliff-hangers" and "many-a-time abrupt endings" as I’ve read elsewhere. I don't think "serialization" works as either a fault-generator or a mitigation; the book in your hands either holds together as you read it or it's de-coherently "over-long". Think of cricket. If you savor the pace of the game as it is, a five-day Test, or seven-game series, isn't 'too long'-- it unfolds at just the length it needs to. If you can't stand the sport, each batter's innings or team's at-bat is already an eternity of boring nonsense; forget about a match or game. Either way, it isn't the length itself that's guilty of generating one's antipathy. I can't see which 'thousand lines' of War and Peace one would 'blot'...I have always been vehemently anti-literary-flab. The lack of an author's ability to distinguish what is essential and what isn't and to pare away the flab has always seemed in my eyes a weakness and not a virtue. It does not mean that I do not like long novels in and of themselves, I just find long swathes of them to be gratuitous flab (well written and brilliant though they might be). The Russian masterpieces act as a great case in point. “Anna Karenina”, “War and Peace” and “The Brothers Karamazov” (the three classic doorstops) were all written serially for the magazine The Russian Messenger. They were written in weekly installments by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky with word count and longevity of project strictly in mind (not that Tolstoy needed the money...). Now, the two authors knew that they were padding things out with side-track stories and story-telling devices, but we the modern readers know the books as they are and can't imagine any paragraph being cut (or in fact added to the end to smooth out the many-a-time abrupt endings, which are also legacies of the serialization). We like those novels for what they are and not for what they could theoretically be, but that doesn't mean that the modern author doesn't have the burden to perfect the pacing and content of his or her novel by removing the excess. There seems to exist nowadays a fanboy-like reaction to works even in cultured matters. People zealously defend endless novels, for some reason equating critique of length with critique of the total merit of the book. One can love a book and still critique its faults - we're not football ultras, we're readers.Basically I say that a modern-day author has no excuses for writing over-long. It's a shame that some Modern (and some not so Modern) Fantasy writers can't manage to edit down their magnum opus.Bottom-line: If you haven't read it, please do persevere past the first chapter and the strange names. It will reward you over and over in a way so few books do.
    • 3/5
      I've finally finished War and Peace (and I only skipped about 150 pages total). The last quarter of this novel was a serious struggle to finish. Especially the two part epilogue, of which only about 20% focused on the primary novel characters (Rostovs, Bolkonskys, Bezukhovs, etc). I'm glad to have read this and I did value the read, but I will never embark on War and Peace again. I wouldn't recommend the novel to the average reader, it's more for an enthusiast of Russian history or literature. I think that any of the various TV and/or film adaptations provide a more interesting, primarily character driven look at the overall text.

      The text focuses on several families and their experience through Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 (although this was a 5 year-long war, the text covers only the 1st year up to and slightly after the burning of Moscow). The most interesting story line (arguably, of course) is that of the love between Natasha Rostov and Andrei Bolkonsky (she eventually marries another main character). Most TV/film adaptations focus on this part of the story. The romance is interspersed with long (LONG) descriptions of major battles, heroes of battle, military and political leaders, and troop movements. Tolstoy said that he hoped to prove that there are no great men in history, that all is a matter largely of chance and the right circumstances. I'm not sure how effectively he proves this in a novel that most people cannot finish, but the focus is there.

      Overall, a great, classic, canon novel. But like many canon texts, I find it hard to recommend to a modern reader. I enjoyed Anne Karenina much more and would say start with that before trying War and Peace - so that you have a sense of Tolstoy's style before trying to complete the longer text.
    • 5/5
      “All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human wisdom.”I’m not sure that I understood this book so much as I observed it. These three quotes pulled from Tolstoy’s masterpiece I believe speak to this; certainly more show than tell. And Tolstoy says a lot. Apparently, over 566,000 words, if the introduction is to be trusted—and why shouldn’t it be? Or bee. We’re all drones of one sort or another. Some just happen to drag a stinger through the honeycomb, with more sense of touch than rigid intention, and paint a portrait of the colony of humanity with more exactitude because of its dragged memory, faint graze through the chambers, the conglomeration of history through personal experience and hindsight. The only extra material I did not read from this edition was the foreword. Once I’d seen that the second part of that was concerned with the parallels between Napoleon’s invasion and Hitler’s of Russia, I stopped giving a shit. I did skim it, to be fair, and was bored to tears. Somehow Tolstoy managed to make nearly 1500 pages riveting, even with the lengthy second epilogue about free will and power. Some artists can dip the quill into honey and pull from that well the inextricably sticky souls of humans who were and are and will forever be (bee) too busy to turn head over thorax and see what they’d inadvertently written.“That is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.”And Tolstoy said it better than I ever could:“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 it 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 sees 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.”
    • 2/5
      While mind-numbingly tedious, I did actually finish this book, and I remembered enough of what I read from one sitting to the next that the characters and plot didn't run together too much. So, I guess as epic fiction goes, this was not terrible. Will I read it again? Probably not. All the characters cry seemingly all the time, the thesis about how individuals are carried along by history pops up way too much in the last 3 books, so that the pedantic lecturer gets in the way of the storyteller and the story a lot. And, if the novel was meant to serve as a tool for discussing the philosophy, in much the same way as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is a vehicle for the long, tedious essay 'speech' near the end, the thesis needed to be woven into the story better.
      The mostly philosophy epilogues were not as good as the rest of the book. The fiction bits in these sections seemed less well edited and had less focus to them. The philosophy was presented as if the story serves to illustrate Tolstoy's points, but he doesn't really make those connections in this section of his text. As straight philosophy these sections do a lousy job of defining the terms Tolstoy is using in his arguments.
    • 5/5
      This epic work of historical fiction is a richly-detailed and thought-provoking tale of the Napoleonic Wars and human passion. The competing thrones of Napoleon and Czar Alexander I are vividly recounted through the lives and deaths in three noble Russian families: the Rostovs, the Bolkonskys and Bezukhovs and their contemporaries. Both battle scenes and life on the home front are vividly and realistically portrayed. The domestic is related with sharp social commentary as witty as Jane Austin, and the fog of war and its horrors with the passion that Tolstoy’s contemporary Victor Hugo puts in the description of the battle of Waterloo in Les Misérables. At the end Tolstoy gives the reader a six part essay on historiography, the causes of war, and free will.Novelist Virginia Woolf wrote that Tolstoy was, "the greatest of all novelists—for what else can we call the author of War and Peace?" Medical missionary Paul Farmer said, “This is just like Lord of the Rings!” Years afterward he’d say, “I mean, what could be more religious than Lord of the Rings or War and Peace?”
    • 4/5
      It took me a long time to finish this. It is a very good book. The 2nd epilogue is Tolstoy's thoughts on history and how it is viewed.
    • 5/5
       Written over a hundred years ago. it remains an absolute classic story so well-written. the characters, so individual and so well defined it was a pleasure taking the trip through all their happiness, pain and loss. It was an emotional Journey. I have to say I laughed, I cried and with the battle scenes( although not exactly my cup of tea) had me fearing for their safety. War and Peace has definitely proven that the test of time has not diminished the greatness of this novel. It is definitely long but the journey was well worth it!
    • 4/5
      Long. Very, very long. Normally that doesn't throw me off - two of my favorite books are The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Miserables, but unlike the French masters, Tolstoy falls flat in his attempts to get me to connect with any of the characters. The plot is fascinating, but it's cluttered by too many intrusive characters that add little to the story.
    • 5/5
      It's known that it took Tolstoy six years to write War and Peace. It took me almost two years to read it - not because I didn't enjoy it, but just the way my reading time was used. I liked this book. It's many characters were interesting, diverse, intertwined in many cases, and individual. Tolstoy did a great job of making each one different from the others. There was no way I could keep remembering who every person was or how one connected with another, but I didn't mind that. It was interesting and I'm glad I read it.
    • 4/5
      Tolstoy's "novel" is a loooong story about the Russian portion of the Napoleonic Wars, along with various discussions about history, religion, power, politics, and war strategy. When I first started this I only knew that there would be a plethora of characters and lots of battle scenes. That was correct, but that turned out not to be the "hard" part about reading W&P. The characters are indeed plentiful, but they get sorted out automatically after a while and the battle scenes are plentiful as well, but they too were less intimidating than expected as Tolstoy does a really great job at following the characters around and make them real people, rather than a random fighting force. What does slow down the reading significantly, however, are the parts that Tolstoy put in the book to make it not-a-novel, i.e. the numerous essays on various topics that are inherently interesting, but unfortunately very not interesting to me - I read this for character and plot, not to learn how to run a battle field. If you're about to read this, I'd recommend starting with the second epilogue as it is a really coherent explanation of Tolstoy's purpose in writing the book. I read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation because I understand that, although perhaps a little less poetic than others, it is the translation that comes closest to Tolstoy's original.
    • 5/5
      Tolstoy's classic tale chronicling the lives of Prince Andrew, Natasha, Princess Mary, Nicholas, and Pierre is set when Napoleon invaded Russia. Yet the book is much more than a work of fiction. It contains a lot of philosophical dialogue interspersed throughout the book, and the final chapters are exclusively of this nature. Despite being one of the longest literary works, it is captivating and quite readable, especially in the Garnett translation.
    • 3/5
      "What is the power that moves people?"
      "What force moves the nations?"

      Neither as onerous as I feared, or as good as I hoped. Can I say that the great classic, ‘War and Peace’ was… just OK?

      Much is made of the book’s ‘epic’ nature, but really, it’s mostly the story of Pierre (think: nerdy trust fund kid trying to ‘find’ himself) and his associates, in Russia during the years leading up to and during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.

      Since the book was written around 50 years later, it’s definitely a ‘historical’ rather than contemporary novel – the equivalent to a WWII story released today. Still, it gives a lot of insight into the social realities of a certain time period in Russia – served up with a heaping portion of Tolstoy’s own philosophies regarding war, politics, religion, social issues – you name it. Some of his ideas (especially regarding the evils of war) I certainly agreed with, others I certainly did not (especially the proper role of women). (He’s specifically anti-feminist, and thinks a good woman’s job is to be a good ‘listener’ and helpmeet to her man.) The character in the book whom I liked/sympathized with the most was definitely Helene Kuragin, which, I’m sure, would horrify Tolstoy, who clearly wants his readers to sympathize with Natasha, who is just horribly boring.

      Still, there’s a lot of interesting things going on here. The whole dynamic of a nation at war with a country whose culture it idolizes is fascinating. And there’re duels, battles, tragedies, romances… you name it, there are plenty of pages for it. (Although, honestly, plenty of today’s ‘epics’ are far longer, due to this multiple-book thing we’ve got going on these days.)

      One thing I did not get. What was up with the whole thing about Marya could not marry Nikolai if their respective siblings (Andrei & Natasha) married each other? Does Russian culture have a taboo on more than one marriage between two different families?

      One note - although the portrayal of the complexities of social interactions and the forces that work together and against each other to form history is a great strength of this book - the writing is not. The phrasing is frequently surprisingly awkward and repetitive. I wondered if it was due to the translation, but I checked several passages in different translations, and retained my opinion. I did also read an essay on Tolstoy that noted that he was not known as a prose stylist. Ah well.

    Book preview

    War and Peace (Deluxe Hardbound Edition) - Leo Tolstoi

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