- Published: 1 April 2009
- ISBN: 9780099512240
- Imprint: Vintage Classics
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 1296
- RRP: $28.00
War and Peace
This indispensable translation is as close to the original as it is possible to get while at the same time being a clear and fluid translation
'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 April 2009
- ISBN: 9780099512240
- Imprint: Vintage Classics
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 1296
- RRP: $28.00
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About the author
Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Tula province. He studied at the University of Kazan, then led a life of pleasure until 1851 when he joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus. He established his reputation as a writer with The Sebastopol Sketches (1855-6). After a period in St Petersburg and abroad, he married, had thirteen children, managed his vast estates in the Volga Steppes and wrote War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). A Confession (1879-82) marked a spiritual crisis in his life, and in 1901 he was excommuincated by the Russian Holy Synod. He died in 1910, in the course of a dramatic flight from home, at the railway station of Astapovo.
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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 It is hard to imagine how this translation could be superseded."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,
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