War and Peace
War and Peace follows several aristocratic Russian families—chiefly the Bezukhovs, Bolkonskys, and Rostovs—across the years of the Napoleonic Wars, from the glittering St. Petersburg salons of 1805 to the French invasion of 1812 and its aftermath. We watch the searching, illegitimate Pierre Bezukhov stumble toward meaning, the proud and disillusioned Prince Andrei seek glory and then peace, and the warm, impulsive Natasha Rostova grow from girlhood through love, betrayal, and sorrow. Their private joys and failures unfold against great public events: the carnage of Austerlitz and Borodino, the burning of Moscow, and Napoleon's ruinous retreat.
Tolstoy weaves intimate domestic life together with sweeping history to ask how individuals find purpose amid forces far larger than themselves. He questions the "great man" theory of history, insisting that events are shaped by countless ordinary people rather than commanding leaders. Through war, death, faith, and family, the novel reaches toward a hard-won wisdom about love, mortality, and living in the present, which is why it endures as one of the supreme achievements of world literature.
How it begins
“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.” It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pávlovna Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasíli Kurágin, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pávlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite. All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows: “If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Prince), and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10—Annette Schérer.” “Heavens!
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.