War and Peace
War and Peace is a literary work by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy that mixes fictional narrative with chapters on history and philosophy. It was first published serially, then published in its entirety in 1869. It is regarded as Tolstoy's finest literary achievement and remains an internationally praised classic of world literature. Romain Rolland, remembering his reading the novel as a student, wrote: "this work, like life itself, has no beginning, no end. It is life itself in its eternal movement." Thomas Mann thought War and Peace to be "the greatest ever war novel in the history of literature." Ernest Hemingway confessed that it was from Leo Tolstoy that he had been taking lessons on how to "write about war in the most straightforward, honest, objective and stark way." "I don't know anybody who could write about war better than Tolstoy did".
War and Peace chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. Portions of an earlier version, titled The Year 1805, were serialized in The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 1867 before the novel was published in its entirety in 1869.
Tolstoy said that the best Russian literature does not conform to standards and hence hesitated to classify War and Peace, saying it is "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle". Large sections, especially the later chapters, are philosophical discussions rather than narrative. He regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel.
Excerpted from War and Peace on Wikipedia.
War and Peace
| Author | Leo Tolstoy |
| Country | Russia |
| Genre | Historical fiction, War, Philosophical fiction, Literary fiction |
| Copyright | Public domain in the United States. |
| Book cover | - |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | - |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive |
| Read online | WAR AND PEACE --Audio will be added soon-- VOL. I Book I, II, III VOL. II Book I, II, III, IV, V VOL. III Book I, II, III VOL. IV Book I, II, III, IV EPILOGUE Epilogue |