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War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo [Vintage,2008] (Paperback) Reprint Edition
War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo. Published by Vintage,2008, Paperback Reprint Edition
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About the author
Leo Tolstoy
8,048 books28.7k followersLev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 15, 2025
Finally, I have finished one of the epics of Russian literature. I can only begin with a quote from the book’s preface:
“War and Peace is the most famous and at the same time the most daunting of Russian novels, as vast as Russia itself and as long to cross from one end to the other. Yet if one makes the journey, the sights seen and the people met on the way mark one's life forever”
I believe every word of praise sung about this book is true. I was initially skeptical about reading Tolstoy because my earlier exposure to him was limited to his short stories, which were mostly rooted in religious teachings. At that time, I could not quite grasp what made Tolstoy so appealing. Eventually, I decided to take on his monumental epic, War and Peace, and I can confidently say that the journey was worth it.
Even after the story ends, almost every character stays with you. Tolstoy’s world-building is extraordinary, and each character’s arc is handled with remarkable depth. There are so many characters that any one of them could easily carry their own book or standalone story.
From the very first page, Tolstoy introduces the dual world of war and peace and makes it clear which war this epic will encompass. The French invasion of Russia, the Battle of Borodino, and the burning of Moscow are all depicted with stunning detail and emotional weight. At first, I assumed this would be a purely historical novel filled with dry accounts of warfare, but I was completely wrong. Across its nearly 1300 pages, there is no truly boring section. Some parts may shine less brightly than others, but none feel dull or unnecessary. While reading the war sequences, I often felt the same emotions I experienced while watching the 2001 series "Band of Brothers".
I read the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation, and frankly, it is excellent perhaps even too faithful at times. Tolstoy originally used a significant amount of French throughout the novel, and the translators preserved the original French in the main text, placing the English translations at the bottom of the page. Occasionally, this interrupts the flow of reading, as one has to shift attention to understand a character’s dialogue. Since I am at an amateur level in learning French, I treated it as a useful exercise, but other readers may find this aspect slightly inconvenient.
I would recommend this book to anyone. War, love, philosophy - everything is woven together in this epic, and I believe every reader will find something meaningful within its pages. I could write much more about this book, and perhaps someday I will. For now, I will conclude with Tolstoy’s own words about his work:
“it is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle".
War and Peace is truly one of a kind, and it will always be included whenever there is a discussion of the Golden Age of Russian literature.
“War and Peace is the most famous and at the same time the most daunting of Russian novels, as vast as Russia itself and as long to cross from one end to the other. Yet if one makes the journey, the sights seen and the people met on the way mark one's life forever”
I believe every word of praise sung about this book is true. I was initially skeptical about reading Tolstoy because my earlier exposure to him was limited to his short stories, which were mostly rooted in religious teachings. At that time, I could not quite grasp what made Tolstoy so appealing. Eventually, I decided to take on his monumental epic, War and Peace, and I can confidently say that the journey was worth it.
Even after the story ends, almost every character stays with you. Tolstoy’s world-building is extraordinary, and each character’s arc is handled with remarkable depth. There are so many characters that any one of them could easily carry their own book or standalone story.
From the very first page, Tolstoy introduces the dual world of war and peace and makes it clear which war this epic will encompass. The French invasion of Russia, the Battle of Borodino, and the burning of Moscow are all depicted with stunning detail and emotional weight. At first, I assumed this would be a purely historical novel filled with dry accounts of warfare, but I was completely wrong. Across its nearly 1300 pages, there is no truly boring section. Some parts may shine less brightly than others, but none feel dull or unnecessary. While reading the war sequences, I often felt the same emotions I experienced while watching the 2001 series "Band of Brothers".
I read the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation, and frankly, it is excellent perhaps even too faithful at times. Tolstoy originally used a significant amount of French throughout the novel, and the translators preserved the original French in the main text, placing the English translations at the bottom of the page. Occasionally, this interrupts the flow of reading, as one has to shift attention to understand a character’s dialogue. Since I am at an amateur level in learning French, I treated it as a useful exercise, but other readers may find this aspect slightly inconvenient.
I would recommend this book to anyone. War, love, philosophy - everything is woven together in this epic, and I believe every reader will find something meaningful within its pages. I could write much more about this book, and perhaps someday I will. For now, I will conclude with Tolstoy’s own words about his work:
“it is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle".
War and Peace is truly one of a kind, and it will always be included whenever there is a discussion of the Golden Age of Russian literature.
February 4, 2025
I feel I should have liked this book much more than I did. I enjoyed it to be sure, but I did not love it in the way I do other pieces of Russian literature. At first, I couldn’t figure out exactly what bothered me about it. It was not until the latter third of the novel that it became more clear.
Tolstoy is a determinist. We might say today that he rejects the Great Man theory of history in favor of the impersonal forces which propel human events. He is hardly subtle about this; he returns to the theme again and again throughout novel, particularly in the richly detailed battle scenes and closing chapters. To Tolstoy, a war or battle’s outcome is not the consequence of any human agency or intentional decision-making per se but rather is the sum of innumerable seemingly arbitrary actions and environmental factors beyond human volition. Napoleon’s decision to invade Russia in 1812 is not a unilateral expression of his hubris but a practically inescapable, pre-determined development. As is his decision not to pause his offensive in Smolensk or his decision not to commit the Imperial Guard at Borodino. A commander’s orders during battles are superfluous and irrelevant to the outcome. Kutuzov, Napoleon’s bête noire on the Russian side, is equally at the mercy of the fates. Grand strategy, intelligence, calculation, and even luck are explicitly dismissed as illusions.
There is an inherent problem with such a deterministic framing in a 1,200 page novel centered around the trajectories of individual peoples’ lives—it tends to discount the importance of those individuals and their choices within the story. What difference does the minutiae of their lives make in shaping outcomes for them or anyone else when everything that happens “could not have been otherwise” as Tolstoy frequently proclaims?
Though the novel is regarded as one of Russia’s greatest literary works, it is decidedly *not* a work of nationalist literature, something I was surprised to learn. This is not Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture in book form. Ironically, the determinism actually has the effect of understating the contribution of the Russian generation that waged the “Patriotic War.” Kutuzov, the Czar, and Barclay de Tolly ultimately triumph not because of strategic canniness, vision, or the contingent nature of war, but because it could not have happened any other way. Dominic Lieven’s excellent history of the conflict, “Russia Against Napoleon,” argues to the contrary that vision, planning, and leader idiosyncrasies played a decisive role in shaping the conflict.
Tolstoy is a determinist. We might say today that he rejects the Great Man theory of history in favor of the impersonal forces which propel human events. He is hardly subtle about this; he returns to the theme again and again throughout novel, particularly in the richly detailed battle scenes and closing chapters. To Tolstoy, a war or battle’s outcome is not the consequence of any human agency or intentional decision-making per se but rather is the sum of innumerable seemingly arbitrary actions and environmental factors beyond human volition. Napoleon’s decision to invade Russia in 1812 is not a unilateral expression of his hubris but a practically inescapable, pre-determined development. As is his decision not to pause his offensive in Smolensk or his decision not to commit the Imperial Guard at Borodino. A commander’s orders during battles are superfluous and irrelevant to the outcome. Kutuzov, Napoleon’s bête noire on the Russian side, is equally at the mercy of the fates. Grand strategy, intelligence, calculation, and even luck are explicitly dismissed as illusions.
There is an inherent problem with such a deterministic framing in a 1,200 page novel centered around the trajectories of individual peoples’ lives—it tends to discount the importance of those individuals and their choices within the story. What difference does the minutiae of their lives make in shaping outcomes for them or anyone else when everything that happens “could not have been otherwise” as Tolstoy frequently proclaims?
Though the novel is regarded as one of Russia’s greatest literary works, it is decidedly *not* a work of nationalist literature, something I was surprised to learn. This is not Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture in book form. Ironically, the determinism actually has the effect of understating the contribution of the Russian generation that waged the “Patriotic War.” Kutuzov, the Czar, and Barclay de Tolly ultimately triumph not because of strategic canniness, vision, or the contingent nature of war, but because it could not have happened any other way. Dominic Lieven’s excellent history of the conflict, “Russia Against Napoleon,” argues to the contrary that vision, planning, and leader idiosyncrasies played a decisive role in shaping the conflict.
July 30, 2025
What is an historical "event"? What we think of as history teems with happenings that seems self-evident: wars, migrations, economic booms and busts. Yet when we seek to know how these things happened, we seem to find ourselves on shifting sand. People take part in these events, yet the events surpass all the people who participated. Forces beyond humanity sway us to action, but the action would not be possible were it not already a matter of human interests. So can anything really be known of "history"?
Because Tolstoy takes this anti-realist stance in regards to historical events, we have War and Peace. Famously not called a "novel" by Tolstoy himself but simply a "book," it aims its fictional aspect at a truth that no non-fiction work could capture. It is old hat by now to say that Tolstoy creates life-like characters; perhaps he is the best to ever do it. They are human in a way that is recognizable despite their time and place being alien to the modern reader, but it is this very displacement in which Tolstoy recognizes our shared humanity. We are all confronted with struggles that history imposes on us with an arbitrary cruelty; we all seek from this history to extract a meaning for ourselves that will raise us above this arbitrariness. And so War and Peace serves this outlet to us as readers: we see in all the characters so vividly rendered that striving against circumstance, that want for something greater that the world is always denying us. The theme is so universal that even 1,200 pages seems short. By the time you finish the book, you have the sense that it could be extended indefinitely and turn the whole world into a masterpiece. May we be thankful that Tolstoy gave us this much, even if it is so little.
Because Tolstoy takes this anti-realist stance in regards to historical events, we have War and Peace. Famously not called a "novel" by Tolstoy himself but simply a "book," it aims its fictional aspect at a truth that no non-fiction work could capture. It is old hat by now to say that Tolstoy creates life-like characters; perhaps he is the best to ever do it. They are human in a way that is recognizable despite their time and place being alien to the modern reader, but it is this very displacement in which Tolstoy recognizes our shared humanity. We are all confronted with struggles that history imposes on us with an arbitrary cruelty; we all seek from this history to extract a meaning for ourselves that will raise us above this arbitrariness. And so War and Peace serves this outlet to us as readers: we see in all the characters so vividly rendered that striving against circumstance, that want for something greater that the world is always denying us. The theme is so universal that even 1,200 pages seems short. By the time you finish the book, you have the sense that it could be extended indefinitely and turn the whole world into a masterpiece. May we be thankful that Tolstoy gave us this much, even if it is so little.
November 22, 2025
What might someone report of this literary masterpiece of historical fact and fiction? Decades after publication, it remains today a superlative, sensitive narrative of the human condition. It is tragedy; comedy; romance; history; believable well-developed characters; interwoven plot and subplots; and, atmospherics requiring five senses. Yes, it’s long! However, it’s worth the troika ride. There are insights into a society in a much early time and place, discussions of existentialism, international relations…. Tolstoy faultlessly juggles all which are— to the reader—resonate, ageless, universal and accessible.
February 3, 2026
I know it's hubris on my part but I am docking Tolstoy one star for the interminable repetitive side treatises on military theory and history and philosophical musings about beekeeping. But oh, when this is good, it's GOOD. He writes about human nature and people falling in and out of love and families and social mores and about the messy brutality of war, and how the upper classes see the lower classes , and so much more. Was worth 3 months of my life (and this was the 2nd time I've read it).
March 23, 2025
Always wanted to read it and see why it’s such a classic. Tough read because I don’t love reading war depictions, but I did enjoy the bit of character drama and development spread throughout the 1200 pages. It’s not my favorite classic, maybe not even in my top 10, but reading it as a history geek, I enjoyed learning about Russian literature and how this novel became a popular read.
July 26, 2025
single-handedly taught me history
May 12, 2024
I had to read the 2nd Epilogue only for a group discussion of History in literature. Found it not inconsistent with the 1st Epilogue. Previously I’d read the standard post-war Modern Library edition of the novel without much concern for the verisimilitude of the English to the original Russian. Loved it, regardless. Vintage should consider releasing this final chapter as a stand-alone item, or as part of a compilation of essays by Tolstoy on various topics, newly translated of course.
dnf
June 17, 2024Just not my cup of tea.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews