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  • Published: 1 January 2008
  • ISBN: 9780099512233
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 1296
  • RRP: $90.00

War And Peace




'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' Margaret Reynolds, THE TIMES


'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

  • Published: 1 January 2008
  • ISBN: 9780099512233
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 1296
  • RRP: $90.00

Other books in the series

On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was born in central Russia in 1828. He studied Oriental languages and law (although failed to earn a degree in the latter) at the University of Kazan, and after a dissolute youth eventually joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus in 1851. He took part in the Crimean War, and the Sebastopol Sketches that emerged from it established his reputation. After living for some time in St Petersburg and abroad, he married Sophie Behrs in 1862 and they had thirteen children. The happiness this brought him gave him the creative impulse for his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Later in life his views became increasingly radical as he gave up his possessions to live a simple peasant life. After a quarrel with his wife he fled home secretly one night to seek refuge in a monastery. He became ill during this dramatic flight and died at the small railway station of Astapovo in 1910.

Also by Leo Tolstoy

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Praise for War And Peace

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."

Vladimir E. Alexandrov, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures,

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

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

Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year

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

Independent on Sunday

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

Adam Thirwell, Guardian

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

Alan Hollinghurst, New York Times

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

Thomas Mann

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

Observer

Wonderfully readable

Wendy Cope, The Week

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

The Independent

My favourite book of 2007 is this new translation of War and Peace... I'm relishing the incomparable mix of vivid description, penetrating social comment and philosophy. Translators give their wits and craft selflessly in the service of others' work; this is a triumph of fidelity and unpretentiousness

Sally Vickers, Independent

I'm absolutely blown away by this translation. The main thing about reading Volokhonsky and Pevear is that I feel I'm reading a book for the first time...it's a joy to read...There were moments in the book that hadn't quite established themselves until this [translation]...The sense of actually being in the skin of these people is phenomenally, brilliantly rendered by this new translation

Simon Schama

There remains the greatest of all novelists-for what else can we call the author of War and Peace

Virginia Woolf

A rollicking historical novel

Vladimir Nabokov

First-rate! What an artist and what a psychologist

Gustave Flaubert

There remains the greatest of all novelists-for what else can we call the author of War and Peace

Virginia Woolf

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

Thomas Mann

My favourite book of 2007 is this new translation of War and Peace... I'm relishing the incomparable mix of vivid description, penetrating social comment and philosophy. Translators give their wits and craft selflessly in the service of others' work; this is a triumph of fidelity and unpretentiousness

Sally Vickers, Independent

I'm absolutely blown away by this translation. The main thing about reading Volokhonsky and Pevear is that I feel I'm reading a book for the first time...it's a joy to read...There were moments in the book that hadn't quite established themselves until this [translation]...The sense of actually being in the skin of these people is phenomenally, brilliantly rendered by this new translation

Simon Schama

Tolstoy is a magnificent writer. he is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!

James Joyce

A rollicking historical novel

Vladimir Nabokov

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). They do so because they understand that Tolstoy is in the details: that the essence of his art is embodied in all the resources of language, and that to "smooth" his language, to "fill in" what he leaves unsaid, or to "simplify" what he repeats, as all other translators do, is to betray his sui generis linguistic world and, therefore, that world's incomparably rich meanings. 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

Vladimir Alexandrov, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University

First-rate! What an artist and what a psychologist

Gustave Flaubert