War and Peace (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
  • Published: 27 February 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784871949
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 1296
  • RRP: $22.99

War and Peace (Vintage Classic Russians Series)

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
27 Feb 2017
EBook
31 Aug 2011
Buy from…
Amazon Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Collins Find local retailers Find local retailers Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

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

'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

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

Also by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace
Hadji Murat
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
Android Karenina
Last Steps
Last Steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy
See all

Praise for War and Peace (Vintage Classic Russians Series)

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

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

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

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

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,

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

Thomas Mann

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

Wonderfully readable

Wendy Cope, The Week

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

Contemporary Review

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

The Independent

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
penguin pop image
penguin pop image