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War and Peace (Vintage Classics) |  | Author: Leo Tolstoy
Creators: Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.04
as of 11/27/2009 12:16 CST details
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Seller: a1books
Rating:  80 reviews
Sales Rank: 3385
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 1296
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6 x 1.9
ISBN: 1400079985
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.733
EAN: 9781400079988
ASIN: 1400079985
Publication Date: December 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
From the award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov comes this magnificent new translation of Tolstoy's masterwork.
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.
A s 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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 80
 Yes, it's a long one, but it offers something I've found nowhere else. November 24, 2009
M. Strong (Milwaukee, WI USA)
War and Peace is a daunting book to start. I've put it off for years, starting it twice and abandoning it because I just wasn't quite ready to commit the time. I'm really glad I did, because Tolstoy presents something here that I've never found anywhere else.
War and Peace is essentially a classic work of historical fiction that exists to give its reader a different view on the entire perspective from which we view all of history. If that seems like a huge task, perhaps that's why this book is so long. Ultimately, I think you'd be hard-pressed finish this book without giving very serious consideration to how you read and perceive history and you go about giving credit (or not giving credit) to leaders today for the things that happen on their watch.
Tolstoy uses the entire 1,200 pages to make his case, but I'll try to boil it down to its essence as best I can. (I'm not hopeful) The idea is that we are wrong to credit individuals like Napoleon or Czar Nicholas (or Ronald Reagan or FDR for that matter) with leading their countries and people into massive actions, or new ways of thinking. Tolstoy makes a convincing case for the idea that history is nothing more than a long series of cause and effect events, one set of conditions leading inevitably to the next and that the individuals we credit with great influence over those events are nothing more than the person who utters the right words at the right time to coincide with those events.
Indeed, Tolstoy says it far better than I and his narrative drags his characters through a series of events in which they learn these lessons first hand. I really recommend investing the time to read War and Peace, you'll find something unique within. Even if you don't, you can still stick it on your shelf and tell people you read it. Think of it as an insurance policy.
Wonderful literature - Much improved translation October 16, 2009
Star Walker (Virginia, USA)
War and Peace, Tolstoy's multi-faceted, multi-story classic of the war with the French in the 1800s has been translated with a more true to life flow of the language. The translation holds true to the Russian and French spoken at the time. This causes a more lyrical flow and a more poetic approach to the writing.
I read War and Peace first as a 13 year old. 55 years later, it still has the power to entrance and hold the reader in its grip.
I have seen three of the movie editions: the Hollywood Mel Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda version, which is a delightful presentation; the 16 hour Russian version, which is extremely detail oriented and true to the novel (to include the entire change of crops in the fields); and the British mini-series, video, which is well done and well acted. For historic reference, the Russian version is best.
Excellent translation October 10, 2009
Christian L. Cantrell
If you are interested in this story then this is an excellent translation to buy. I have another copy of the book at home and it is from a translation that is about 100 years old. This one does bring forth more clarity of the text and imagery than the older copy. Great story too. Worth the time it took to read it.
 Overrated September 17, 2009
Kenneth Rankin (Norcross, GA United States)
2 out of 9 found this review helpful
Finally finished reading War and Peace. It was on the list of things I wanted to do since high school. It was quite a slog to get through, and not just because it is 1,200 pages long. It is probably the most overrated novel I've ever read. Tolstoy could have told the same story in 400 fewer pages. It finally got to a point where I was praying for Napoleon to get to Russia and kill off these characters. LOL I tried and tried to get into it. If it wasn't for it being on my list of things to do before I die I would never have finished it.
I Can't Believe It, But I Want To Read It Again July 20, 2009
Douglas S. Wood (Monona, WI)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
So, no joke, I'm going to review War and Peace? Pointless? Presumptuous? Yes, so feel free to get on with reading this Great Work. Of course I highly recommend that you read War and Peace. Even if I thought it did not live up to expectations, so what? Read it and form your own judgment.
So, mainly for my own use, here's my review. First, the fact that the book is one the Greatest of the Great Books (I mean, it's *War and Peace*) does get in the way of just reading the book on its own terms, perhaps more than any work. But the book's daunting length eventually cures you of that concern. Checking in at 1215 pages (including an Epilogue that is around 80 pages long), reading War and Peace is truly a marathon. I admit that at times it was a slog.
I read the new translation by Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky. From my limited research, the husband and wife seem to be generally considered as the best interpreters of Russian literature. How one judges a translation in a language one does not read is problematic, but so be it.
A short summary: In the words of Woody Allen, it involves Russia. Ha-ha. Tolstoy basically follows the lives and fates of three families, all of them rather odd. Of course, hanging over all of them is the Napoleonic War. The story swings back and forth between the home front and the battlefields. Tolstoy's realistic depictions of battle still seem quite modern in many ways - the fog of war, the wildly mixed emotions within each man's breast, and the suddenness of death in battle. He also depicts life of the soldiers and life of the generals.
The Rostovs are a noble family in Moscow who have hit hard times and are sliding toward disgrace. The story especially features the deeply annoying Natasha - what a helpless little drama queen! She moves from one crisis to the next, most of them either of her own making or exacerbated by her. Her brother Nikolai tries to perform heroic feats in battle. Little brother Petya provides the sudden tragedy. Over-protected Ma Ma provides the road to poverty with her witless insistence on living her normal life of luxury. The Rostoves are living examples of the need of proper Russian nobles to maintain appearances and of the men to be seen to protect the women (alas, not all Russian nobles are `proper').
We meet Pierre Bezukhov in the books first pages at a fancy party in comparatively racy Petersburg. He is then and remains always extraordinarily introspective and entirely susceptible to the needs of others. He begins quite poor, but his father the count acknowledges his paternity on his death bed. The count dies and suddenly Pierre is the wealthiest man in town. He also moves from one thing to the next, but never by half-measures; no dabbler is he. He marries disastrously (this wife later dies, during the occupation of Moscow, if memory serves). He joins and devotes himself to the Freemasons. He seeks to live a moral life despite his riches.
Pierre always seems stunned like a duck that has been struck upon the head. `Dazed and confused' might be going it a bit too far, but it gives the general idea. He is a space cadet. He is odd. He seeks out the Borodino battlefield and wonders around it. He narrowly misses being killed. At one point, Pierre ludicrously plans to assassinate Napoleon. Later during the occupation of Moscow, he is taken captive where he meets Karataev, a peasant with more sense than Pierre has ever experienced among the nobility. Well-rounded and grounded is Karataev and some of it rubs off on Pierre. He is eventually freed, falls in love with Natasha, and marries her in the first Epilogue - a fairy tale ending that Tolstoy somehow makes seem inevitable and necessary to the reader and thus acceptable.
The Bolokhonsky's are a noble family of some military notoriety and now ensconced at their Bald Hills Estate. At one time, son Andrei is to marry Natasha Rostov, but the demands of Andrei's strange father manage to chill that idea (and then Natasha totally destroys it with an ill-conceived and idiotic fling). When war comes, Andrei signs on as aide-de-camp to Kutuzov. Andrei is intoxicated with the idea of glory and honor. He does lead an heroic charge and later organizes an artillery squadron's even more heroic stand, but Andrei is seriously wounded. His near-death experience sends him spiraling downward. His love for Natasha flares up again, but then he is mortally wounded. Carried home, Andrei dies a long and painful death in her care.
Tolstoy greatly admires the Russian general Kutuzov, who seems to have a mixed reputation among historians. He derides the `genius' Napoleon. On the whole, however, Tolstoy eschews the Great Man approach to history. He regards the outcome of wars as controlled by great forces. In the second epilogue (Yes, there are really two epilogues!), Tolstoy makes it clear that he believes a divine power is the moving force behind man's actions. He seems not mean, however, that this control occurs in a specifically direct way with the Big Guy with the Beard directing each step. As these things always do, the attempt to reconcile an almighty god with man's free will becomes hopeless. Tolstoy would have done the reader a favor by leaving out the second epilogue. He should have left it, as he had developed through the course of the book, his rather fatalistic view that the great streams of history so control events that the ability of individual people to change its course is extremely limited.
I have left great swaths of the book untouched. Suffice to say that I am already beginning to think that I need to re-read the book, just a few days after rejoicing when I at last turned the final page. The book is so vast that I begin to feel that one only gets a general grasp on the first reading.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 80
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