Oxford World's Classics: War and Peace - Softcover

In Russia's struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Greater than a historical chronicle, War and Peace is an affirmation of life itself, `a complete picture', as a contemporary reviewer put it, `of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness, their grief and humiliation'. Tolstoy gave his personal approval to this translation, published here in a new single volume edition, which includes an introduction by Henry Gifford, and Tolstoy's important essay `Some Words about War and Peace'.

In Russia's struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Yet while his historical vision ranged beyond national frontiers, his imaginative vision focused, with extraordinary intensity, on the lives of individuals, on the physical reality of human experience and its bewildering complexity. Greater than a historical chronicle, War and Peace is an affirmation of life itself, 'a complete picture', as a contemporary reviewer put it, 'of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness, their grief and humiliation'.