War and Peace: With bonus material from Give War and Peace A Chance by Andrew D. Kaufman

Leo Tolstoy

Apr 2014 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

War and Peace is considered one of the world’s greatest works of fiction. It is regarded, along with Anna Karenina, as Tolstoy’s finest literary achievement.

Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.

Ratings and reviews

This started out as a personal challenge for me. After all..."War and Peace", for goodness sake! Not exactly the "great American novel". It turns out that this was a fascinating and engrossing melded historical and fictional account of an era that helped shape modern Europe. The writing style of Tolstoy -- and here, I tread lightly, as I assume the translation was true to the author's own style -- the writing style was not only enjoyable, but quite surprising in wryness of word choices to describe even the most harrowing of circumstances. If I have one issue, it would be in the intellectual discussion on predeterminism -- for lack of a better word -- that the author introduces within the story, devotes some almost entire chapters to, and then culminates with a full epilogue (Epilogue II, specifically). While the points he brings up are quite valid, enlightening and meaningful, I feel that they were overdone and somewhat heavy-handed at times. Ultimately, I wound up skimming through Epilogue II, as I got the gist of the author's point in the first few paragraphs and some first sentences throughout. That said, after reading over 1800 pages, skimming an epilogue did not ruin the experience for me. I'm glad I took on this challenge!

An amazing, powerful & modern novel with themes that resonate today such as love, lust, pride, rage, and grief. It is uniquely Russian yet also transcends Russia as it dives deep into issues like celebrity-worship, nationalism and the struggles during and after war faced by ordinary people.

Characters were introduced in rapid succession. It jumped from one with a hard name to pronounce to an unrelated person who had a similar challenging name, and I felt like I'd never get them sorted. Once I did, I didn't want to put it down. It's an incredibly long book, so I had to. I lost sleep, though, trying just one more chapter, and then just one more...maybe one more. If you take notes on characters, you'll avoid the hassle I faced, and it is very well worth it.

About the author

Leo Tolstoy grew up in Russia, raised by a elderly aunt and educated by French tutors while studying at Kazen University before giving up on his education and volunteering for military duty. When writing his greatest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy drew upon his diaries for material. At eighty-two, while away from home, he suffered from declining health and died in Astapovo, Riazan in 1910.

Andrew D. Kaufman, internationally recognized Russian literature scholar at the University of Virginia, is the author of Understanding Tolstoy and coauthor of Russian for Dummies. An award-winning teacher of Russian language, literature, and culture, he is a featured Tolstoy expert on Oprah.com and is frequently invited to discuss Russian literature and culture on national and international television and radio programs.