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War and Peace: Original Version |  | Author: Leo Tolstoy
Creator: Andrew Bromfield
Publisher: Ecco
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
Buy New: $9.27
as of 11/28/2009 03:07 CST details
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Seller: inflatable-madness
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 122897
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 912
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 2.6
ISBN: 0060798874
EAN: 9780060798871
ASIN: 0060798874
Publication Date: September 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A sweeping, romantic saga of two noble families and their intertwined destiny, and a panoramic portrait of Russian society at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Tolstoy's unforgettable masterpiece has inspired love and devotion in its readers for generations. Now read the original version of Russia's most famous novel, which never made it to publication in Tolstoy's lifetime. Undiscovered for more than a century, this edition—with its subtly different characters, dialogue, and ending—is essential reading for devotees of Tolstoy and new readers alike: it is world-class fiction in its most vivid and vital form.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 Good read November 6, 2009
S. Bryce (Phx, AZ)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I purchased this book as a gift and it was it great condition. thank you
Very interesting, but NOT "War and Peace" June 30, 2009
PMR (Baltimore, MD, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an incomplete draft of a story which Tolstoy thought of publishing under the title "All's Well That Ends Well." Luckily, being the genius that he was, he realized that this story was not on track to end well, and with more than two years of additional effort he developed it in a radically different fashion until it became the novel we know as "War and Peace." So call it "War and Peace: Rejected Version" if you like, or even "War and Peace: Inadequate Version", but "Original Version" it is not. To market it in such a dishonest fashion is a disgrace.
It is, however, very interesting because of the light it sheds on the story that Tolstoy finally did publish. In a nutshell, it is an early version of the first three quarters of that story, with sketches for a rejected conclusion dangling off the end. It thus affords two fascinating revelations. Firstly, it shows how Tolstoy reshaped the part of this text that did finally make it into print, cutting out redundant matter like an artist eliminating superfluous lines from a drawing. The finished narrative is much leaner and terser as a result. Secondly, it shows how much of what makes "War and Peace" such a transcendent achievement did not mature in Tolstoy's imagination until the later stages of composition. The fact that his creative genius burned hotter the longer he worked is surely one reason that "War and Peace" is so great. It ends as strongly as it begins. There is no sense of anticlimax. Had he stuck with the ending sketched in this text, it would have been a huge anticlimax.
Not that everything that Tolstoy added in the final phase of composition is riveting. Conspicuously absent from this text are the philosophical and historiographical essays that may fairly be thought to mar and even overwhelm Books 3 and 4 of the novel. The point is, however, that most of what makes "War and Peace" such a great work is also missing here.
Original Title August 10, 2008
o. bender (Krasnodar, Russia)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Why didn't Ecco publish the original version under its original title: "War, what is it good for?". Larry David will read the soon-to-be-released audio version.
Excellent. May 2, 2008
Gladiator (Moscow, Russia)
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
This book is topheavy with bad reviews from people who like the regular version and have made a faith-based religion out of it. But this is not in competition with that other version, wherever that stands. In fact there is little finality possible. because in fact Tolstoy published six different versions before WP was finally translated into English.
This particular translation is good enough. Parts of it were published in magazines before the "final" version, but Bromfield doesn't tell us which parts those were. Most of it was unpublished by Tolstoy and can be legitimately called "first draft". But most of it reads like the final version, so it's more like a truncated version with a few changes.
I liked the fact that Bromfield didn't succumb to the Maudes' custom of anglicizing Russian names. But I missed the Russian and French words that give the Dole translation such authenticity and flavor.
I was interested to read that Tolstoy also regarded WP to be "verbose" and with too much that was superfluous. And that he also regarded Dolokov as the most interesting character in the book.
The book is also well made, and graphically attractive, with many interesting illustrations selected by Tolstoy.
Why this version of War and Peace rocks February 12, 2008
Andy K (Adelaide, Australia)
17 out of 22 found this review helpful
I have tried War and Peace several times since I was a teenager, and each time I have enjoyed it UNTIL I get to the same bit. This is the bit where Tolstoy decides it's time to give us all a little lecture (say, a mere hundred and fifty pages) on his theory of history.
I think this is in an inexcusable flaw in a story, book, or epic. Worst of all, it makes poor Leo Nicholayevich into precisely the pretentious git which he didn't want to be remembered as.
Because of the pretentious and boring quality of the classic War and Peace, I quit reading this book. But I felt like I had failed when I was a teenager. Now I am a mature adult and I know better: Tolstoy was being a pretentious bore.
What we English readers didn't know then is that there are other versions of Tolstoy's novel. One, it would seem, written while he was still part of everyday society, and one written after he gave up in disgust on society. And the version which has reached the Anglosphere is the latter version, infected with his disgust at society.
Tolstoy considered titling the earlier version "All's Well That Ends Well". It was his first full draft. This version has a number of improvements over the classic or canonical version. It is half the length. It has not of the pretentious digressions into essay-lectures. And it has more of the peace and less of the war. In addition, when I recently learned that the earlier version doesn't have the extreme pessimism in it, I leapt up to buy a copy.
It's really fresh and engaging, with little of the heaviness of the latter version.
Tolstoy being one of the most gifted naturalistic observers of all time and a keen vitalist also had a significant shadow side: you can also view him as a really fake guy (he saw himself that way sometimes), and reading him could be exhausting and delibitating.
If you want to read Tolstoy really shining, with less of the parched earth negativism and pessimism of the later man, then this is a fantastic read. If you are new to Tolstoy and have read Jane Austen or Thackaray, then here is your perfect entry-point into Russian literature. The text preserves the jagged edges, the pleasureable style, and the smooth dialog of the original. The story moves faster than the classic version, and the breaks between scenes are sudden and unexpectedly pleasurable. It is much more the modern work than the classic version in this sense.
I love it, and I think many other readers will love it too. I suspect the purist readers who have given this negative amazon reviews may mostly not have read this version, or perhaps they simply are snobs. This delightful book is a great read and free of all the greatest faults that mar the better known version of War and Peace.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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