War and Peace in Read a book from each country

Jun 06, 2014 Jenny (Reading Envy) marked it as did-not-finish · review of another edition

Shelves: mighty-tomes, location-russia, misfit-readers

Since I'll spend the summer reading it, I will leave some links here.

6/6/14 - Summer Reading? How about War and Peace? ...more

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Aug 24, 2008 Anna rated it really liked it

Shelves: leo-tolstoy

Epic story about Russia struggling with Napoleon's army at the beginning of 19th century. Tolstoy showed differences between Russian gentry/nobility itself, customs of this social class (at the age of 16 Natasha Rostova makes her debut at the ball and since than she's treated as an adult), unity of Russian nation in front of danger. Great!!!! ...more

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May 31, 2011 J rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-literature

Whew, finally done. War and Peace isn't the longest work of fiction ever written, but it is probably one of the biggest. Tolstoy tries to pin down the full range of what was happening in and to the Russian aristocracy during the Napoleonic era from 1805-1820. There's duels, court intrigue, grand balls, wolf hunts, nights at the opera, huge battle scenes, spiritual doubts, the whole crazy soap opera of wealthy 19th century Eurasians. That being said, while War and Peace has an almost mind-choking ...more

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Apr 08, 2018 martin rated it liked it

I started this cluelessly, knowing little more than that it was a (very) long novel following multiple aristocratic Russian characters through the Napoleonic years. I naively assumed it would be similar to Anna Karenina, one of my favourite novels. In some ways it starts just like I expected and hoped, with ironic, even bitterly sarcastic, examples of the greed, ambition, baseless snobbery and hypocrisy of a series of interconnected nobles and their shallow meaningless lives, in Russia but not r I started this cluelessly, knowing little more than that it was a (very) long novel following multiple aristocratic Russian characters through the Napoleonic years. I naively assumed it would be similar to Anna Karenina, one of my favourite novels. In some ways it starts just like I expected and hoped, with ironic, even bitterly sarcastic, examples of the greed, ambition, baseless snobbery and hypocrisy of a series of interconnected nobles and their shallow meaningless lives, in Russia but not really of it as they strive to be counterfeit French men and women.
However, while Anna Karenina's superficially polite, cultured, mannered society is shaken by forbidden personal passions, in War and Peace it is the futile, wasteful passion of war which disrupts and breaks tradition and social order. And it is this war where Tolstoy's desire to reflect "reality" shows most strongly.
I'm not a fan of war fiction and endless details about troop movements and so on bore me, but even so, Tolstoy's descriptions of the sheer pointless brutality of much of the war struck home. Forget the public face of medals and crosses, tactical genius and so-called bravery, this is about chaos, disorganisation, poor leadership and unnecessary suffering. He spends a lot of time demonstrating that war is a collection of accidents, mistakes, misunderstandings and selfish ambition, not the smoothly organised, heroic concept history tries to sell - and then to ensure we get the message he has his narrator repeat and repeat ad infinitum the points he wishes to make.
Against this background our aristocratic heroes and villains (fictional and real) are swept along in the tide of history and its violence - reinforcing his message that it is wrong to view history, even as war which is its most disruptive form, as the intentional result of decisions, wise and foolish, by a small group of great and not so great leaders. Free will is a myth as every event has its myriad causes in other smaller events and accidents. His emperors and generals are swept along in the same tide of unpredictable historical inevitability as his fictional families.

Why 3 stars. Well, Tolstoy seems to me to have been so obsessed with this debate that he loses control - his narrator repeats points endlessly and any pretence at "show, don't tell" disappears. I found that tiresome and long winded. I also found his fictional characters a little unbelievable. I'm not a 19th century Russian so I don't understand their passions and emotions but the descriptions of characters falling in love ring untrue. Almost like a teenage girl's or boy's deluded romantic idea of how that happens.

The translation must have been a labour of love and is excellent given the length and complexity of the text, but I wonder why the Briggs version I read on kindle insisted on using anglicised names where these exist. Does it really help an anglophone reader if Maria becomes Mary, Andrei becomes Andrew or Nikolai is Nicholas? Minor, but I found it irritating ...more

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Feb 08, 2008 Sandy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: russia, fiction

Tolstoy's War & Peace is good in English but exquisite in Russian. He has a way with language that just makes you see the characters' facial expressions. I think he probably wrote the epilogue on history first but one of his friends said "Lev, Lev, it's as dry as a bone. Noone's going to read it if you don't make it come alive a little more." And then he went and wrote the other 1,000 pages. ;) It took me about a year to read this in Russian. It was well worth it. ...more

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