War and Peace

A stunning edition of Tolstoy’s great novel, one of the undisputed masterpieces of world literature "The last word of the landlord's literature and the brilliant one at that." —Fyodor Dostoyevsky "The best ever Russian historical novel." —Nikolai Leskov "One of the most remarkable books of our age." —Ivan Turgenev "This is the first class work!… This is powerful, very powerful indeed." —Gustave Flaubert "The best novel that had ever been written." —John Galsworthy "This work, like life itself, has no beginning, no end. It is life itself in its eternal movement." —Romain Rolland "The greatest ever war novel in the history of literature." —Thomas Mann "There remains the greatest of all novelists — for what else can we call the author of ‘War and Peace’?" —Virginia Woolf "Tolstoy is the greatest Russian writer of prose fiction." —Vladimir Nabokov War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men. As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.