War and Peace
In Russia's struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Yet while his historical vision ranged beyond national frontiers, his imaginative vision focused, with extraordinary intensity, on the lives of individuals, on the physical reality of human experience and its...
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In Russia's struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Yet while his historical vision ranged beyond national frontiers, his imaginative vision focused, with extraordinary intensity, on the lives of individuals, on the physical reality of human experience and its bewildering complexity. Greater than a historical chronicle, War and Peace is an affirmation of life itself, 'a complete picture', as a contemporary reviewer put it, 'of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness, their grief and humiliation'.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780192833983 (0192833987)
Publish date: June 25th 1998
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Pages no: 1392
Edition language: English
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 ...
I have to admit, War and Piece intimidated me. The sheer size of it, the huge cast of characters and the fact that is a russian classic (I have that weird prejudice that Russian literature is difficult to read) really made me hesitate to read this book. But since I wanted to watch the BBC miniseries...
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 ...
Henry James, not himself known for brevity of written expression, considered War and Peace a “large loose baggy monster, ” but each time I’ve read through Tolstoy’s 1000++ page rendering of the Napoleonic Wars era in Russia I’ve fallen completely under its spell. The first time, when I was in colleg...
An unqualified work of genius.I read Anna Karenina last year and enjoyed the philosophical aspects of that novel. Not having read much Tolstoy before, I was surprised by this aspect of his writing. In War and Peace, there is even more to contemplate in this regard. In some ways, the book is a muddle...