War & Peace, Volume 1

leo tolstoy neville jason aylmer maude louise maude

War and Peace is one of the greatest monuments in world literature. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, it examines the relationship between the individual and the relentless march of history. Here are the universal themes of love and hate, ambition and despair, youth and age, expressed with a swirling vitality which makes the book as accessible today as it was when it was first published in 1869. In addition it is, famously, one of the longest books in Western literature and therefore a remarkable challenge for any reader.

Genres fictionrussian literaturehistorical fictionclassicsrussialiteraturenovelshistoricalromanwar

32 pages, Audio CD

First published January 1,1867

Series

Война и мир (4 volumes)

Places

slavkov u brna (austerlitz), olomuc (olmütz), moscow, st. petersburg,

This edition

Format: 32 pages, Audio CD
Published: October 1, 2006 by Naxos Audio Books
ISBN: 9789626344330
ASIN: 9626344334
Language: English

Characters More characters

Pierre Bezukhov

Count (Graf) Pyotr "Pierre" Kirillovich Bezukhov (Russian: Пьер Безу́хов, Пётр Кири́ллович Безу́хов, or Pierre Bezuhov according to Rosemary Edmonds translation) is a central fictional character in Leo Tolstoys novel War and Peace. He is the f...
Natasha Rostova

Countess Natalya "Natasha" Ilyinichna Rostova (Russian: Наталья "Наташа" Ильинична Ростова, named Natasha Rostov in the Rosemary Edmonds version; born 1792, according to the book) is a central fictional character in Leo Tolstoys novel War and Peace....
Nikolai Rostov

Count Nikolai is the brother of Vera Rostova, Natasha Rostova and Petya Rostov. At the start of the novel, Nikolai is aged 20 and a university student. He gives up his studies in a zealous desire to serve his country as a Hussar in the fight against Napol...
Ilya Rostov

...
Helene Kuragina

Princess Yelena "Hélène" Vasilyevna Kuragina (Russian: Елена "Эле́н" Васи́льевна Кура́гина) is a fictional character in Leo Tolstoys novel War and Peace and its various cinematic adaptations. She is played by Anita Ekberg in the 1956 film, by Amber ...
Anna Scherer

...

About the author

leo tolstoy

Lev 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.