War and Peace (Vintage Classic Russians Series)

About the book

Published: 27 February 2017
ISBN: 9781784871949
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Format: Trade Paperback
Pages: 1296
RRP: $22.99

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War and Peace (Vintage Classic Russians Series)

Leo Tolstoy

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The Vintage Classics Russians Series - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history

THE ACCLAIMED TRANSLATION BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

'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

From sophisticated Moscow soirees to breathless troika rides through the snow, from the bloody front line at Austerlitz to a wife’s death in childbirth, Tolstoy conjures a broad panorama of rich, messy, beautiful and debased human life. We follow the fates of open-hearted, impulsive Pierre Bezukhov, his melancholy friend Prince Andrei and the enchanting Natasha Rostov, as history and fiction are combined in one of the wisest and most enthralling novels ever written.

‘A joy to read… The sense of actually being in the skin of these people is phenomenally, brilliantly rendered by this translation’ Simon Schama

The Vintage Classic Russians Series: Published for the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, these are must-have, beautifully designed editions of six epic masterpieces that have survived controversy, censorship and suppression to influence decades of thought and artistic expression.

Pub date: 27 February 2017
ISBN: 9781784871949
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Format: Trade Paperback
Pages: 1296
RRP: $22.99

Categories:

Share…

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.

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Praise for War and Peace (Vintage Classic Russians Series)

“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

“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

“It may sound pretentious, or strange, but I can remember the weeks (three weeks, to be precise) I spent reading War and Peace as a peak experience of sustained excitement and deep delight. Part of the delight was the largeness and strangeness of this world - the sense of the vastness and extremes of Russia, the unboundedness of everything”

Finacial Times

“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

“Highly and deservedly praised...is a remarkable achievement.”

Contemporary Review

“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