War and Peace (Penguin Classics) [Mass Market Paperback]

"There remains the greatest of all novelists--for what else can we call the author of War and Peace?"
--Virginia Woolf

"From the Paperback edition." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

`reveals Tolstoy in his majestic scope and precision to this reader for the first time...ringing with mastery and truth'
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'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' Margaret Reynolds, THE TIMES --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Few would dispute the claim of "War and Peace" to be regarded as the greatest novel in any language. This massive chronicle, to which Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) devoted five whole years shortly after his marriage, portrays Russian family life during and after the Napoleonic war. Tolstoy's faith in life and his piercing insight lend universality to a work which holds the mirror up to nature as truly as those of Shakespeare or Homer.

Packaged like the best most desirable literary fiction - the perfect Christmas gift. It Includes a translator's introduction, a chronology of Tolstoy's life and works, a list of characters, further reading, and four maps.
'This is the best translation so far of Tolstoy's masterpiece into English. It achieves the difficult feat of combining faithfulness to the original with smooth, idiomatic English. The result is a triumph of cultural mediation' – Robert Maguire, Professor of Russian, Columbia University, New York
'In Tolstoy’s work part of the translator’s difficulty lies in conveying not only the simplicity but the subtlety of the book’s scale and effect… Professor Briggs has rendered them both with a particular exactness and a vigorous precision not to be found, I think, in any previous translation' - John Bayley --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born in Tula province and was educated privately and at Kazan University. In 1851 he went to the Caucasus, joined an artillery regiment & began his literary career. After marrying in 1862, he began writing War and Peace, which was finished in 1869. His second great work, Anna Karenina, was finished in 1876. Professor Tony Briggs is former Professor of Russian at the University of Birmingham, and is the author of six books on Russian literature.

Professor Tony Briggs is former Professor of Russian at the University of Birmingham, has translated widely from the Russian, especially Pushkin, and is the author of several critical books on Russian literature. Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck and the author of A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924, which was awarded the Wolfson Prize for History and, most recently, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.