War and Peace is a Novel By Russian author Leo Tolstoy, published in series, then in its entirety in 1869. (pre-reform Russian: Война и миръ; post-reform Russian: Война и мир, romanized: Vojna i mir [vɐjˈna i ˈmʲir]) It is considered one of Tolstoy's best literary achievements.
The novel tells the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. Parts of an earlier version, entitled The Year 1805, were serialized in The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 1867, and then published in full in 1869.
Tolstoy said that War and Peace "is not a novel, much less a poem, and less a historical chronicle." Large sections, especially later chapters, are a philosophical discussion rather than narrative. Tolstoy also said that the best Russian literature does not conform to the standards and, therefore, hesitated to call Guerra y Paz a novel. Instead, he considered Anna Karenina as her first true novel.
Author | Leo Tolstoy |
---|---|
Original title | Война и миръ |
Translator | The first translation of War and Peace into English was by American Nathan Haskell Dole, in 1899 |
Country | Russia |
Language | Russian, with some French |
Genre | Novel (Historical novel) |
Publisher | The Russian Messenger (serial) |
Publication date | Serialised 1865–1867; book 1869 |
Media type | |
Pages | 1,225 (first published edition) |
About The Author
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; 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.
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