Description

By (author) Tolstoy Leo; Introduction by Volokhonsky Larissa; Introduction by Pevear Richard; Translated by Volokhonsky Larissa; Translated by Pevear Richard

”If you”ve never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don”t read
War and Peace,
you live it”
The Times

Tolstoy”s enthralling epic depicts Russia”s war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. He creates some of the most vital and involving characters in literature as he follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their personal and political relationships. His heroes are the thoughtful yet impulsive Pierre Bezukhov, his ambitious friend, Prince Andrei, and the woman who becomes indispensable to both of them, the enchanting Natasha Rostov.

‘It is simply the greatest novel ever written. All human life is in it. If I were told there was time to read only a single book, this would be it’ Andrew Marr

TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

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This is, at last, a translation of War and Peace without the dreadful misunderstandings and “improvements” that plague all other translations of the novel into English. Pevear and Volokhonsky”s supple and compelling translation is the closest that an English reader without Russian can get to Tolstoy”s masterwork. This is a great achievement. It is hard to imagine how this translation could be superseded.”

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It is simply the greatest novel ever written. All human life is in it. If I were told there was time to read only a single book, this would be it

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Reveals Tolstoy in his majestic scope and precision to this reader for the first time, unencumbered by the pidgin archaisms of previous translations, ringing with mastery and truth

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There is a good argument to say that any decent library must make room for War and Peace

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War and Peace… is gleefully experimental…
Tolstoy is the greatest miniaturist in the history of the novel. He is economical… [An] outlandish, wonderful novel

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The greatest of all novels. Read it again, to test and savour the infallible truth of Tolstoy’s understanding of every stage and aspect of human life

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To read him . . . is to find one”s way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane

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In War And Peace
, richly observed human life – its catastrophes and passions, its thrills and tedium – mark out Tolstoy as a fox, who knows all about the dizzying diversity of existence

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Wonderfully readable

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Translators give their wits and craft selflessly in service of others” work; this is a triumph of fidelity and unpretentiousness.

Biographical note:
Leo Tolstoy was born in central Russia on 9 September 1828. In 1852 he published his first work, the autobiographical Childhood. He served in the army during the Crimean War and his Sevastopol Sketches (1855-6) are based on his experiences. His two most popular masterpieces are War and Peace (1864-69) and Anna Karenina (1875-8). He died in 1910.