Reader Score
88%
88% of readers
recommend this book
War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind his family to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman, who intrigues both men. As Napoleon's army invades, Tolstoy vividly follows characters from diverse backgrounds--peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers--as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving--and human--figures in world literature.
Pevear and Volokhonsky have brought us this classic novel in a translation remarkable for its fidelity to Tolstoy's style and cadence and for its energetic, accessible prose.
Richard Pevear has published translations of Alain, Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Savinio, Pavel Florensky, and Henri Volohonsky, as well as two books of poetry. He has received fellowships or grants for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the French Ministry of Culture. Larissa Volokhonsky was born in Leningrad. She has translated works by the prominent Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff into Russian.
Together, Pevear and Volokhonsky have translated Dead Souls and The Collected Stories by Nikolai Gogol, The Complete Short Novels of Chekhov, and The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Demons, The Idiot, and The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky. They were twice awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for their version of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and for Tolstoy's Anna Karenina), and their translation of Dostoevsky's Demons was one of three nominees for the same prize. They are married and live in France.
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When Leo Tolstoy set out to write War and Peace, he initially wanted a story about the Decembrist revolution of 1825. He ended up with a work that (mainly) focuses on the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812. 🪖#bookfactoftheday #TheStrand☮️
https://t.co/0qdtgfjP4x is a free-to-play literary-based word game. Each day features a new quote or book passage with only some of the letters revealed. Can you solve it?
Did you know that Leo Tolstoy took a year to write the opening scene of War and Peace? Today's https://t.co/5g5wiOm1mN puzzle is a passage from that classic Russian novel. Enjoy! #wordgame #warandpeace #tolstoy #BookTwitter
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War and Peace is a monumental literary work written by Leo Tolstoy, often hailed as one of the greatest novels ever written. It delves deep into the human condition, exploring the effects of war on individuals, families, and society as a whole. (1/3) https://t.co/m48pCprouc
"A major new translation . . . [which] brings us the palpability [of Tolstoy's characters] as perhaps never before. . . . Pevear and Volokhonsky's new translation gives us new access to the spirit and order of the book."
--James Wood, The New Yorker
"Excellent. . . . An extraordinary achievement. . . . Wonderfully fresh and readable. . . . The English-speaking world is indebted to these two magnificent translators for revealing more of its hidden riches than any who have tried to translated the book before."
--Orlando Figes, The New York Review of Books
"Tolstoy's War and Peace has often been put in a league with Homer's epic poems; it seems to me that the same might be said for Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation of his great novel. . . . Their efforts convey a much closer equivalent in English to the experience of reading the original."
--Michael Katz, New England Review
Full review here: http: //www.nereview.com/29-4/29-4Katz.htm