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War and Peace (Vintage Classics) by Leo…
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War and Peace (Vintage Classics) (original 1868; edition 2008)

by Leo Tolstoy (Author), Richard Pevear (Translator), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
30,11446295 (4.26)30 / 2493
4.5 ⭐️s. Drum roll, please. 🥁 Started: January 8th. Finished: November 23rd. 😳 How to describe this tome? Epic. Philosophical. Historical. Multifaceted. Sweeping. Character-driven. Profound. Realistic. Timeless. Masterpiece. Intricate. Sociopolitical. Reflective. Ponderous. Intimate. Symbolic. Richly descriptive. Challenging. Humanistic. Moralistic. Cinematic. Intellectual. Turbulent. Elegiac. Redemptive. Spiritual. Unpredictable. Universal. It's LIFE. ( )
  crabbyabbe | Nov 24, 2023 |
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when I bought this at a local little book store, the owner told me "good luck. I've tried twice and couldn't get through it..."

sad to say this has to go on hold. I have another huge book to read and then I'll get back to this beast!
  Trisha_Thomas | Nov 14, 2024 |
Tolstroy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French Invasion of Russia.

I had always wanted to read this epic Novel by Tolstroy's but was completely put off by the sheer size of the book at 1350 pages. I am not a lover of books over 500 pages and this was certainly going to be a challenge for me.

I have planned a trip to Russia this year and this was the encouragement I needed to finally pick up this novel, also the fact that the BBC had filmed a new adaptation of the novel which had aired in January and it was getting great reviews. So I approached the masterpiece by ordering a hard copy as I wasn't sure I could handle this one on Kindle. I also taped the complete BBC Series and decided I would watch the first episode to get the characters, names and places firmly set in my head and then read the book as a side read over a three month period(finished it in 6 weeks)

I finally finished this masterpiece last night and really did enjoy the read. Today( Mother's day) I sat down and watched several hours of Television Series and really enjoyed so much having completed the book.

1812 napoleon invades Russia in an order to expand his ever-growing Empire. Three Russian families of Nobility The Rostovs, The Bolkonskys and the Bezukonskys become intertwined and an immense story of War, Romance, Riches, betrayals, jealously and hatred make this story so compelling.

This is not an easy read by any means as it is a challenge, with all the war descriptions and long descriptive passages and at time dialogs that tends to go on and on and yet its story and characters are amazing and I found myself engrossed and loved picking up the book and getting back to the characters.

This is not a book I would recommend friends to read, but if like myself you want a challenge and this is on your TBR List then I would encourage you to read it over a period of time and I think you will be surprised at how readable and enjoyable it really is.

I have to applaud the BBC Series which was extremely well adapted to screen and very close to the actual book except for the accents! ( )
  DemFen | Oct 31, 2024 |
A long read, once abandoned a tenth-way through, looked at multiply with promise to be picked up and read again and thoroughly enjoyed after reading it to completion this time round. A wonderful story, that just as the title suggests, starts with the beginning of a war and ends at the end of the war.

I expected a lot more patriotism, there's still some level of patriotism, and heightened national praise. The characters weren't as hard to keep up with as I thought they'd be either, the lengthiness of the book shouldn't have intimidated me as it did. This story follows members of upper class Russian society during this period of war and their families, love affairs, marriages, roles in the war, losses and death resulting from the war. I certainly loved the love bits and ordinary life passages more than I did the war bits that seemed to drag on after several hundreds of pages of it, and the analysis of the history from this period. ( )
  raulbimenyimana | Oct 13, 2024 |
Oh dear. Oh dear. How to explain? I started this at the beginning of the summer and chose to listen to the audiobook because summer in Toronto means construction. As in you can't really drive from anywhere to anywhere in less than an hour and I wanted a good long listen for the season. At first, I could hardly contain my gushing. I was madly, deeply in love with this novel. The action! The characters! The setting! The detail! And I continued to feel that way until about the 70% mark. And then I found myself choosing to listen to a few chapters of some other novel. And a few more. I went from having to drive though Tim Horton's and sit in the parking lot because I just could not stand to turn off the audio to having to bribe myself to keep on listening. What went wrong for me? Firstly, I started to weary of Tolstoy lecturing me. I understood the first time he gave me his view of history and the players who take centre stage in it. He started to interject more and more of these lectures and rightly or wrongly, they started to feel longer and longer and more berating as the novel went on. The ratio of action to lecture seemed to shrink. Then I started to get seriously annoyed by Pierre. It had seemed to me from the beginning that the admiration he was given was not commensurate with the man. I thought that he would grow. But even though he is incredibly well seasoned with all of his experiences in the war, his travel, his very life, it seemed to me that he was virtually unmarked by all of it. I can not fathom Tolstoy's admiration of this character. I lost interest. Do what I might, I have not been able to convince myself that I should finish the darn thing. I still give it five stars because 70% of it was far far far better than hundreds of novels I have read. By rights this should go on my unfinished shelf. ( )
  kgabriel | Oct 11, 2024 |
I want to give this 5 stars, but there were a few parts that really dragged for me and seemed needlessly bloated. It took me probably 900 pages to really understand this mammoth of a novel, if you can call it that, because Tolstoy didn't see this as a "novel". The second epilogue is interesting but seems misplaced and repetitive as Tolstoy tells the reader over and over again what his theory on the science of history is.

Anyway, there is a lot to say about this book but at this point I am a little burned out. It was LONG. Part of the challenge in reading this isn't that it is hard to understand or overly complicated (other than the 400 names) but rather in its sheer epic length. It is daunting. It is scary. But it is doable.

This was my first venture into Russian literature and I enjoyed it. I plan on reading more Tolstoy because of this book. It is easy to see, once you have read it in its entirety (and I do believe that is necessary, pushing through it even when it gets tough, to understand its value) why this is a classic. ( )
  remjunior | Oct 2, 2024 |
TMI, DNF.
Prodigious translation, but I couldn't care less about the conversations.
  CynicusRex | Aug 22, 2024 |
Una novel.la exquisita ambientada en les campanyes bèl.liques que van enfrontar Rússia i la França napoleònica entre els anys 1805 i 1813. La descripció, tant de la vida en el front com el de la noblesa russa, és captivadora. Una obra que, malgrat la seva extensió, és de fàcil lectura i et situa al bell mig dels camps de batalla i del les festes aristocràtiques. ( )
  AntoninoSegon | Aug 19, 2024 |
Book 61.
War and Peace.
Leo Tolstoy.
Having finished my self imposed challenge of 60 books before I'm 60 I am now going to continue reading. For my 60th I was bought a book by Alison - 100 books that changed the world.
I have already read 17 of these. A lot if them are really heavy going... Including the Bible, the Koran, Freud, Plato etc. I am also reading my old diaries which are reminding me of other books I have read. I am going to write a mish mash now of the books I read in the past together with what I am currently reading. Mainly as a record for myself as I am forgetting more and more...
So War and Peace... I read when I was 25 on the big trip to India with Nick Wannan. I remember getting about a quarter of the way through and a character called Nicholas (who in my head had died) seemed to reappear. Totally confused I went back a few pages trying to find when and how he died. I had to start again after finding a family tree at the back of the book and realising I had merged 2 characters into 1. A difficult read but I did it.
4/100 books that changed the world.
Stewart Green ( )
  janicearkulisz | Aug 2, 2024 |
THE novel.
In it you will find the whole human experience, in its political and social outcomes, in the reflection on life and philosophical quests, in the small worries and joys of everyday life, in the inner feelings and thoughts of human beings.
More than anything else I appreciated Tolstoj 's supernatural insight in the intimate works of characters' minds, their instinctive reactions and the motivation unknown even to themselves. Here the omniscient narrator reaches its best achievement.
Another main feature is Tolstoj's view of History as complex nteraction of huge forces unconsciously represented by the masses of humble human beings, compared to which "great men" are nothing more than puppets, delusional fools pushed by bigger forces to prow of the ship of History, and so erroneously convinced that they are dividing the waters in front of them while the ship drags them with her (metaphor by Tolstoj himself, as I mis-remember it after some weeks). Tolstoj invokes Providence as the Great Puppeteer, but his attention is caught by the powerful force of the masses of apparently insignificant human beings who suffer and die in the name of menaingless ideals and strategies, and who, in the end, are the ones who make History happen.
Dialectical materialism is down this road, but here we are reading a novel, something which is more than the sum of the theorical positions of its writer. It reminded me of the most poetic pages on spirituality and justice in Marx's and Engels' writings except that here someone is telling us a story, and from the perspective of a conservative Russian nobleman of the 19th century, of course.
IL romanzo.
Dentro c'è tutta l'esperienza umana, nei suoi aspetti collettivi, nella riflessione esistenziale e filosofica, nelle minuzie della vita quotidiana, nell'interiorità. Sopra ogni cosa ho amato la mostruosa capacità introspettiva nel descrivere onestamente e spassionatamente i processi mentali dei personaggi più diversi, nelle situazioni più disparate, senza preconcetti e moralismi, e la visione della Storia come complessa interazione di forze, masse, necessità schiaccianti di fronte alle quali i "grandi uomini" risultano ridimensionati alle loro attuali proporzioni: fantocci trascinati dallo svolgersi degli eventi alla prua della nave della Storia, che credono di determinare per questo il separarsi delle onde di fronte alla chiglia (metafora dell'autore, come me la ricordo dopo un mese). Tolstoj invoca la Provvidenza come burattinaio ultimo, ma il suo interesse è catturato dalla forza trascinante della grande massa indistinta di esseri umani senza potere individuale che soffrono, muoiono, subiscono in nome di ideali e strategie senza senso, ma che alla fine sono i soli in grado di far accadere la Storia.
Il materialismo dialettico è dietro l'angolo, ma la forma è il romanzo, e questo fa di Guerra e Pace qualcosa di più della somma dei ragionamenti che ho appena parzialmente e goffamente riassunto. Ricorda le pagine migliori di Marx e Hegel quando parlano di spiritualità e di giustizia, con invenzione narrativa integrata nell'analisi e la prospettiva storica di un nobile russo conservatore.
Un'esperienza che consiglio a tutti. ( )
  Fiordiluna | Jul 31, 2024 |
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. ( )
  tayswift1477 | May 15, 2024 |
THE novel.
In it you will find the whole human experience, in its political and social outcomes, in the reflection on life and philosophical quests, in the small worries and joys of everyday life, in the inner feelings and thoughts of human beings.
More than anything else I appreciated Tolstoj 's supernatural insight in the intimate works of characters' minds, their instinctive reactions and the motivation unknown even to themselves. Here the omniscient narrator reaches its best achievement.
Another main feature is Tolstoj's view of History as complex nteraction of huge forces unconsciously represented by the masses of humble human beings, compared to which "great men" are nothing more than puppets, delusional fools pushed by bigger forces to prow of the ship of History, and so erroneously convinced that they are dividing the waters in front of them while the ship drags them with her (metaphor by Tolstoj himself, as I mis-remember it after some weeks). Tolstoj invokes Providence as the Great Puppeteer, but his attention is caught by the powerful force of the masses of apparently insignificant human beings who suffer and die in the name of menaingless ideals and strategies, and who, in the end, are the ones who make History happen.
Dialectical materialism is down this road, but here we are reading a novel, something which is more than the sum of the theorical positions of its writer. It reminded me of the most poetic pages on spirituality and justice in Marx's and Engels' writings except that here someone is telling us a story, and from the perspective of a conservative Russian nobleman of the 19th century, of course.
IL romanzo.
Dentro c'è tutta l'esperienza umana, nei suoi aspetti collettivi, nella riflessione esistenziale e filosofica, nelle minuzie della vita quotidiana, nell'interiorità. Sopra ogni cosa ho amato la mostruosa capacità introspettiva nel descrivere onestamente e spassionatamente i processi mentali dei personaggi più diversi, nelle situazioni più disparate, senza preconcetti e moralismi, e la visione della Storia come complessa interazione di forze, masse, necessità schiaccianti di fronte alle quali i "grandi uomini" risultano ridimensionati alle loro attuali proporzioni: fantocci trascinati dallo svolgersi degli eventi alla prua della nave della Storia, che credono di determinare per questo il separarsi delle onde di fronte alla chiglia (metafora dell'autore, come me la ricordo dopo un mese). Tolstoj invoca la Provvidenza come burattinaio ultimo, ma il suo interesse è catturato dalla forza trascinante della grande massa indistinta di esseri umani senza potere individuale che soffrono, muoiono, subiscono in nome di ideali e strategie senza senso, ma che alla fine sono i soli in grado di far accadere la Storia.
Il materialismo dialettico è dietro l'angolo, ma la forma è il romanzo, e questo fa di Guerra e Pace qualcosa di più della somma dei ragionamenti che ho appena parzialmente e goffamente riassunto. Ricorda le pagine migliori di Marx e Hegel quando parlano di spiritualità e di giustizia, con invenzione narrativa integrata nell'analisi e la prospettiva storica di un nobile russo conservatore.
Un'esperienza che consiglio a tutti. ( )
  Elanna76 | May 2, 2024 |
Marvellous ( )
  denmoir | Apr 27, 2024 |
I took on the challenge of reading War and Peace in a positive frame of mind. I consider myself reasonably well read and willing to tackle books that aren't immediately easy, and I'd read many enthusiastic reviews and I was looking forward to finally tackling this classic. I've failed. I had difficulty getting to grips with the vast cast of characters, though I did eventually master these, and indeed became interested in the various family sagas which form such an important part of the narrative. I tried to interest myself in the War aspects of the book, and failed dismally. And as for the philosophical digressions, which increased towards the end of the book, and most particularly in the epilogue: I ended up skim-reading these. I kept on thinking that an editor with a very big red pencil should have been let loose on the book. I'm sure the loss is mine, but it's a book about which I'm now pleased to be able to say 'I've finished it!' ( )
  Margaret09 | Apr 15, 2024 |
A marvelous Book that repays whatever time one devoteds to it. I have read this translation, and lived in it for several weeks, and felt bad when it ended. The attempt to portray an entire culture, and, be fully aware of it has never been bettered. ( )
  DinadansFriend | Apr 7, 2024 |
Obviously, I'll look like an idiot if I give this book a rating of less than five stars, but I read it after I had read many of Tolstoy's later religious works in which he had grown out of the pantheism I found inherent in this greatest of novels. It's awesome, of course, just not my favorite work of his. ( )
  mmarty164 | Apr 5, 2024 |
He makes a good point. ( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
It's hard, if not impossible to give a rating for this book.

Good:
It's about Russia during the reign of Alexander I. I didn't know anything about Russia, and for that sole reason this book was interesting to read.
The book reads like a movie.
There is variety in the text. Some parts are a bit Jane-Austen-like (salon-situated satire), others more like philosophical musings on the workings of men and war and some parts are like an episode of the BBC-series Sharpe, when Tolstoy follows officers during the Napoleonic wars.
Tolstoy sketches brilliant psychological portraits of his characters. Eventually you can relate to any of them (or at least you'll have a friend that is a lot like that character).
Tolstoy describes phenomena in human interaction that are still applicable today (and probably always will be), such as what we (at my office) call Weasels: people that behave in such a way that they earn the rewards for the work and suffering of other (lower-ranking) people.

Bad:
Some parts are slow and a bit boring.
Some characters are introduced with great care only to be mentioned in later books with the greatest indifference.
In the first part, you cannot but hate all the characters in the salon. Tolstoy described their faults in great detail and no one is left to like which makes reading on difficult.
Pierre varies between a hero and an anti-hero.


  jd7h | Feb 18, 2024 |
It's a very good war novel buried under ~600 pages of soap opera and ~200 pages of Tolstoy's philosophy of History. ( )
  amanda4242 | Feb 1, 2024 |
War and Peace is one of those books which can be placed in almost any section of a library. Writer Leo Tolstoy refuses to call this book a novel, so what is it really? For me, this book is simply the most perfect example of preservation of history. It is a time capsule containing remnants of the years 1805-1813, and one could get a very detailed insight of life in the various sectors of the two Russian socioeconomic centers, Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

The book mainly serves to educate the reader about Russia's civil and military state during the years that it covers, and fills up the narrative spaces with fictional characters and events that end up defining the soul of this book. War and Peace is a great history lesson, but it also has some of the best characters ever written. The way the fates of its protagonists intertwine with the historical events and with each other over the course of this book makes the reader go through the entire emotional spectrum. War and Peace is destined to make you smile, sob, hold your breath, and be inspired. If you're a fan of war stories and epics, this book will give you one of the best literary rides of your life. ( )
  shadabejaz | Jan 31, 2024 |
I'm giving the translation 1 star, with a bonus star because it is Tolstoy after all. I slogged through it in 2007 or so when this highly touted translation came out. But recently I have figured out that the Maud translation is widely considered to be the best and specifically the Norton Critical Edition. What a difference! This Pevear/Volokhonsky translation includes all the French, with translations down at the bottom of the page in tiny type - very distracting - and explanatory endnotes rather than footnotes - too awkward to consult. For a true scholar, this may be the best way to go. For a casual reader like me, it just throws up obstacles to enjoyment.

Here is an example from the translators' introduction, which shows their approach and has convinced me to reread War and Peace again in a different translation: "The children were riding to Moscow on chairs and invited her to go with them." Huh? They then give examples from previous translations, which make it clear to me what this sentence means: "The children were sitting on chairs playing at driving to Moscow." "The children were playing at 'going to Moscow' in a carriage made of chairs." They claim that these miss both the rhythm and the point (what point? it seems to be to see things naively from the children's point of view). For me, the less slavishly literal translations explain what the children were doing so I can get on with reading. ( )
1 vote Amniot | Jan 18, 2024 |
I think Emily May, Matthew and Lyn did a better job of reviewing this book than I ever could.

I can understand why this is seen by many as the greatest novel. It literally has everything in it in regards to methods of telling a story in a novel.

The title of War and peace can apply to the war with Napoleon, but also for society, relationships, and even within the lives and minds of the characters. All of it is in constant turmoil and rest. Tolstoy is quite observant of humanity, and does an excellent job of exploring those observations in this novel.

For such an exceptional novel, the only drawback I would have is Tolstoy's exposition on history in the second epilogue. You can skip that. The rest of the novel is fantastic. There are not many novels that give such a detailed account of a time period, place and character development over a long period of time. A very long novel that most of the time didn't feel like it at all.

If it is on your to do list, then I recommend diving in. It will go by faster than you think. ( )
  wvlibrarydude | Jan 17, 2024 |
My god, what a slog! The story itself meanders over a pretty vast timespan and cast of characters. The worst part is all of Tolstoy's long-winded philosophical discursions peppered throughout (especially at the end). Much like Moby Dick, if the author had stuck to the narrative instead of trying to show off, it'd be a much easier read. I get that he's trying to illustrate that people are influenced by their circumstances, but letting the story alone prove his point would have been sufficient.

The story itself is pretty entertaining. It can be tricky to keep all of the characters separate, but you figure out who's who pretty quickly by their mannerisms and speech patterns. I did like the way the characters developed between the two periods of war.

Having struggled through the bloviating, I can assure any prospective readers that the non-narrative chapters and passages can be skipped without detracting from the story. You'll finish the thing much faster, too. ( )
  cmayes | Dec 21, 2023 |
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. ( )
  JBarringer | Dec 15, 2023 |
4.5 ⭐️s. Drum roll, please. 🥁 Started: January 8th. Finished: November 23rd. 😳 How to describe this tome? Epic. Philosophical. Historical. Multifaceted. Sweeping. Character-driven. Profound. Realistic. Timeless. Masterpiece. Intricate. Sociopolitical. Reflective. Ponderous. Intimate. Symbolic. Richly descriptive. Challenging. Humanistic. Moralistic. Cinematic. Intellectual. Turbulent. Elegiac. Redemptive. Spiritual. Unpredictable. Universal. It's LIFE. ( )
  crabbyabbe | Nov 24, 2023 |
No wonder this is a classic! Amazing writing, great insights into human character, heartbreaking and eye-opening. I was grateful to have this is print and audio. This edition has a great narrator, in Edoardo Ballerini. I highly recommend. It isn't as daunting as you thought. ( )
  njcur | Nov 16, 2023 |
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