War and Peace [Paperback]

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

Often called the greatest novel ever written,War and Peaceis at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy’s genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle—all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual’s place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placedWar and Peacein the same category as theIliad:“To read him . . . is to find one’ s way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.”“There remains the greatest of all novelists—for what else can we call the author ofWar and Peace?” —Virginia WoolfA. N. Wilsonis an award-winning novelist, biographer, and journalist, and the author ofGod’s Funeraland the biographiesC. S. Lewis,Paul, andJesus. He lives in London.

1. 1. In an article, “Some Words AboutWar and Peace,” Tolstoy writes: “What isWar and Peace? It is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle.War and Peaceis what the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it is expressed.” He goes on to discuss how many precedents for this “disregard of conventional form” there are in the history of Russian literature. How do you respond to this characterization of the novel? Does it help you understand its scope, structure, or style?

 

2. 2. Relatedly, while some novelists have bemoaned what they considered to be the formless nature ofWar and Peace, Henry James called it “a wonderful mass of life.” How didlÃ: