Leo TolstoyClassics · Literary Fiction·1828–1910
War and Peace
Synopsis
Across the years of the Napoleonic Wars, Leo Tolstoy follows the intertwined fortunes of several Russian aristocratic families, chiefly the Bezukhovs, Bolkonskys, and Rostovs, as their lives are swept up in an era of invasion, upheaval, and change. At its center are three unforgettable figures: the awkward, searching Pierre Bezukhov, heir to an unexpected fortune; the disillusioned Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, seeking meaning in war and love; and the vivid, impulsive young Natasha Rostova.
Around their courtships, marriages, betrayals, and spiritual crises, Tolstoy stages the great public events of the age, from the salons of Saint Petersburg to the catastrophe of the 1812 French invasion and the burning of Moscow. He moves constantly between the intimate and the immense, insisting that history is made not by great men but by the countless small actions of ordinary people.
War and Peace is one of the towering achievements of world literature, part novel, part philosophy of history. Vast in scope yet minutely observed, it is a meditation on love, death, freedom, and the search for how to live.
How it reads
- c'est pas facile de dire ce que j'en ai pensé, il m'a fallu beaucoup de patience et de temps et j'ai failli lâcher à plusieurs reprises, mais je l'ai fait. Ce n'est pas un livre facile mais Tolstoï a su faire l'équilibre entre les passages soutenus et pleins de détails historiques des scènes de guerre, et les passage de la paix: la vie dans la société russe rurale et urbaine. Ces deux côtés ont été traités avec cohérence, on ne se sent pas dépaysé, car la trame du livre est liée entre les deux mondes. C'est romanesque, c'est romantique, c'est un immense livre de par l'histoire et la. forme aussi. Ce fut un voyage époustouflant.
- One of the best books I have ever read. It is definitely worth the page count. Not only do you get so involved in the characters and story, Tolstoy has so much to say about history and us as humans.