War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy, Anthony Briggs (Translator), Anthony Briggs (Introduction), Orlando Figes (Afterword), Coralie Bickford-Smith (Artist)

Overview

A stunning clothbound Hardcover Classics edition of Tolstoy’s great novel, one of the undisputed masterpieces of world literature. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
 
At a glittering society party in St. Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon’s army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey, and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants, to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes—conflict and love, birth and death, free will and fate—with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur.
 
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780241265543
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/14/2017
Series:	Penguin Clothbound Classics
Pages:	1440
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 2.40(d)
Lexile:	1130L (what's this?)

About the Author

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was born in central Russia. After serving in the Crimean War, he retired to his estate and devoted himself to writing, farming, and raising his large family. His novels and outspoken social polemics brought him world fame.
 
Anthony Briggs (translator) has written, translated, or edited twenty books in the fields of Russian and English literature.
 
Orlando Figes (introduction) is the prizewinning author of A People’s Tragedy and Natasha’s Dance. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Review of Books.

Date of Birth:

September 9, 1828

Date of Death:

November 20, 1910

Place of Birth:

Tula Province, Russia

Place of Death:

Astapovo, Russia

Education:

Privately educated by French and German tutors; attended the University of Kazan, 1844-47

Read an Excerpt

WELL, PRINCE, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family. No, I warn you, that if you do not tell me we are at war, if you again allow yourself to palliate all the infamies and atrocities of this Antichrist (upon my word, I believe he is), I don’t know you in future, you are no longer my friend, no longer my faithful slave, as you say. There, how do you do, how do you do? I see I’m scaring you, sit down and talk to me.”
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "War and Peace"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Leo Tolstoy.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Belief in the Soul;
The Night Side of Nature;
Living Apparitions;
Talking to the Dead;
The Uninvited Possession;
Haunted Houses;
Highways to Hell;
Spooky Sites;
Ghost Hunters

What People are Saying About This

Vladimir E. Alexandrov

"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 not only render the meanings and nuances of Tolstoy's language faithfully and beautifully, they also strive to transmit the structure and feel of his prose, down to the level of individual sentences and phrases (as much as the constraints of English allow)."--(Vladimir E. Alexandrov, B. E. Bensinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Chair, Slavic Department, Yale University)

Red Burns

Everybody has the same technology. But what's going to make the difference is the imagination that the people bring to that technology. Until people learn how to have computers serve their idiosyncratic behavior, we aren't going to see anything (Red Burns is Chair, NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program).

Reading Group Guide

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy’s genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle—all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual’s place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad: “To read him . . . is to find one’s way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.”

Interviews

Contains approximately 587,000 words.

Editorial Reviews

There remains the greatest of all novelists—for what else can we call the author of War and Peace?” —Virginia Woolf

From the Publisher

…a fine new translation, especially one by the widely acclaimed team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, offers an opportunity to see this great classic afresh, to approach it not as a monument (or mausoleum) but rather as a deeply touching story about our contradictory human hearts. Stressing that their War and Peace sticks more closely to the Russian text than any other, including Louise and Aylmer Maude's semi-canonical 1923 version, Pevear and Volokhonsky retain the considerable amount of French used by Tolstoy's counts and princesses, preserve the author's penchant for word repetition and aim to match his tidy syntactic conciseness. The result certainly reads smoothly, its English being neither egregiously contemporary nor inappropriately old-fashioned. In this respect, the Pevear-Volokhonsky War and Peace joins company with recent translations of The Tale of Genji, Don Quixote and In Search of Lost Time, these being among the few works of classic fiction equal to Tolstoy's in scope and richness.
—The Washington Post

Michael Dirda

The melancholy Prince Andrey, the awkward and intellectual Pierre, and the spirited Natasha undergo various transformations in Russia during and after the 1812 Napoleonic invasion in this version of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece.. The performances are uniformly dignified, accomplished, and mellifluous. And very British. However, while the events and characters are faithful to the celebrated novel, they are gracelessly adapted, greatly compressed, and bloodlessly produced. Gone is any Russian character, most of Tolstoy’s intellectual content, the majority of the 500 characters, and the sweep of events. Only Emily Mortimer as Natasha makes a solid impression by virtue of her sparkle and charm. It’s as if the monumental events of 1805-1820 all took place in drawing rooms and ballrooms. Y.R. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

FEB/MAR 07 - AudioFile