This edition also contains appendices, notes, a list of prominent characters and maps. Translated with an introduction and notes by Anthony Briggs, and with an afterword by Orlando FigesĪnthony Briggs's superb translation combines stirring, accessible prose with fidelity to Tolstoy's original, while Orlando Figes's afterword discusses the novel's vast scope and depiction of Russian identity. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes - conflict and love, birth and death, free will and faith - with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants to soldiers and Napoleon himself. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever.

In this revised and updated version of the definitive and highly acclaimed Maude translation, Tolstoy’s genius and the power of his prose are made newly available to the contemporary reader.A beautiful Penguin Classics clothbound edition of Tolstoy's magnificent epic novel of love, conflict, fate and human life in all its imperfection and grandeurĪt a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Yet Tolstoy’s portrayal of marital relations and scenes of domesticity is as truthful and poignant as the grand themes that underlie them. The prodigious cast of characters, both great and small, seem to act and move as if connected by threads of destiny as the novel relentlessly questions ideas of free will, fate, and providence.

Balls and soirées alternate with councils of war and the machinations of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles with everyday human passions in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed. War and Peace is an epic novel by Leo Tolstoy, first published from 1865 to 1869 in Russki Vestnik, which tells the story of Russian society during the. The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, are intimately connected with the national history that is played out in parallel with their lives. If life could write, it would write like Tolstoy.’ Isaac Babel Tolstoy’s epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia.

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