War and Peace

The novel opens in 1805 at a fashionable party in St Petersburg and follows three families through the wars against Napoleon: the warm, lively Rostovs and their daughter Natasha; the proud Bolkonskys, whose son Prince Andrei goes to war seeking glory and lies wounded under the sky at Austerlitz; and Pierre Bezukhov, an awkward, generous man who inherits a vast fortune and searches for the meaning of life. When Napoleon invades Russia in 1812, their lives are swept into the battle of Borodino, the burning of Moscow and the French retreat through the snow.

Tolstoy worked on the book from 1863 to 1869, and in its essays he argues that history is shaped not by great men but by countless ordinary actions. Its length should not frighten readers: it moves easily between battlefields, ballrooms and family life. This translation is by Louise and Aylmer Maude, friends of Tolstoy. His own experience as a soldier is told in Sevastopol.

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), born at Yasnaya Polyana and a veteran of the Crimean War, wrote two of the summits of the novel, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

In later life he preached simplicity and non-violence in The Kingdom of God Is Within You, a book that deeply influenced Gandhi.