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‘If you’ve never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don’t read War and Peace, you live it’ The Times

Tolstoy’s enthralling epic depicts Russia’s war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. He creates some of the most vital and involving characters in literature as he follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their personal and political relationships. His heroes are the thoughtful yet impulsive Pierre Bezukhov, his ambitious friend, Prince Andrei, and the woman who becomes indispensable to both of them, the enchanting Natasha Rostov.

‘It is simply the greatest novel ever written. All human life is in it. If I were told there was time to read only a single book, this would be it’ Andrew Marr

Publisher Review

It may sound pretentious, or strange, but I can remember the weeks (three weeks, to be precise) I spent reading War and Peace as a peak experience of sustained excitement and deep delight. Part of the delight was the largeness and strangeness of this world – the sense of the vastness and extremes of Russia, the unboundedness of everything * Finacial Times * Reveals Tolstoy in his majestic scope and precision to this reader for the first time, unencumbered by the pidgin archaisms of previous translations, ringing with mastery and truth * Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year * It is simply the greatest novel ever written. All human life is in it. If I were told there was time to read only a single book, this would be it — Andrew Marr This is, at last, a translation of War and Peace without the dreadful misunderstandings and “improvements” that plague all other translations of the novel into English. Pevear and Volokhonsky’s supple and compelling translation is the closest that an English reader without Russian can get to Tolstoy’s masterwork. This is a great achievement. It is hard to imagine how this translation could be superseded.” — Vladimir E. Alexandrov, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, If you’ve never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don’t read War and Peace, you live it * The Times *