War and Peace
War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events surrounding the French invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families. The novel begins in the year 1805 during the reign of Tsar Alexander I and leads up to the 1812 French invasion of Russia by Napoleon. The era of Catherine the Great (1762–1796), when the royal court in Paris was the centre of western European civilization,[16] is still fresh in the minds of older people. Catherine, fluent in French and wishing to reshape Russia into a great European nation, made French the language of her royal court. For the next one hundred years, it became a social requirement for members of the Russian nobility to speak French and understand French culture.[16] This historical and cultural context in the aristocracy is reflected in War and Peace. Catherine's grandson, Alexander I, came to the throne in 1801 at the age of 24. In the novel, his mother, Marya Feodorovna, is the most powerful woman in the Russian court. War and Peace tells the story of five aristocratic families — the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and the Drubetskoys—and the entanglements of their personal lives with the history of 1805–1813, principally Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The Bezukhovs, while very rich, are a fragmented family as the old Count, Kirill Vladimirovich, has fathered dozens of illegitimate sons.
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78recommend
438mentions
370people
2007–2026years
20% recommend76% neutral4% critical
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What Hacker News says
- I've read all three of those in the past three years and I loved them all for wildly different reasons.
If you want a classic novel that's enjoyable to read and has a moral point to make, I'd add War and Peace. The story ends and then the author has a whole afterward dedicated to "In case you missed the point, let me spell it out for you."
- I got the X4 just before my summer holiday and put "War and Peace" from Project Gutenberg on it as my only ebook.
Five weeks later, I'd finished it, all 360 chapters, 1400 pages.
Apart from finding War and Peace a totally engrossing read, one of my favourite books of all time, I give the credit to the X4... I'd never have finished it if reading the physical book (too large to carry around) nor if reading on my phone (too many distractions).
So thank you xteink!
- Some pretty cool recommendations here!
I've personally neglected national (Portuguese) authors for about a decade now, so I've started focusing on that; I'm currently reading "Livro do Desassossego" by Fernando Pessoa.
For the few months before that, I'd focused on some classics:
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Village by Ivan Bunin
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Siddharta by Hermann Hesse
I read quite a bit and love it; if only I could be paid to do it at my own pace and rhythm!
- Funny, I'm just reading War and Peace myself (the Anthony Briggs translation) and having the same reaction, gushing occasionally to people I know how approachable it is, and how darkly funny and modern it feels. Well, at least after passing through the first ~200 pages which are a slog. I didn't find even Tolstoy's historical musings boring, although he tends to repeat himself. And I usually suck at names, but the main characters are done so well I find them easy to remember. There aren't that many important ones despite how it seems at the start. It also serves as a fascinating peek into the daily lives of Russians of all stripes in the early 1800s.
I also had the same reaction to Crime and Punishment as the OP did.
- I didn't expect this, but I'm really enjoying War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
- I read close to 40 books this year which I assume is up from the previous year, and way more than I used to read prior to starting to do the Rochester Library reading challenge (which I've done for the past two years). I won't get into a lot of it, but after reading Middlemarch three years ago, Napoleon: A Life two years ago, and The Power Broker last year I decided to read two "big" books.
In the first half of the year War and Peace, which obviously was excellent, although I liked Middlemarch more.
In the second half of the year David Copperfield which was very excellent. Just beautifully written. I still think I probably like Middlemarch more... but it might now require a re-read to know for sure.
This year is going to be Tom's Crossing to start as I just got that for Christmas.
