Description:

It was acclaimed author Leo Tolstoy's finest literary achievement. War and Peace, the story of five wealthy families of the Russian aristocracy during and after Napoleon's invasion of Russia, is also considered to be one of the finest novels of all time--a book no home library should be without. Now available in this new, enhanced Canterbury Classics edition, War and Peace includes a genuine leather cover, specially designed covers, and a ribbon bookmark for a complete, elegant package. An introduction by a leading literary critic also sheds light on this complicated yet ultimately rewarding and fascinating work. Perfect for Tolstoy devotees as well as those new to this legendary work, this edition of War and Peace is sure to be a classic. Lexile score: 1180L

Review

War and Peace is not so much a novel as it is an attempt to contain all of human life between two covers. Tolstoy follows five aristocratic Russian families—the Rostóvs, Bolkónskis, Bezúkhovs, Kurágins, and Drubetskóys—through the upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars from 1805 to 1820, but the wars serve as backdrop for something far more ambitious: a sustained inquiry into what moves history, what constitutes a meaningful life, and whether human beings possess genuine freedom or are swept along by forces they cannot comprehend.

The novel's three principal seekers each pursue meaning through different channels. Pierre Bezúkhov, the awkward illegitimate son who unexpectedly inherits a vast fortune, stumbles through fashionable society, a disastrous marriage, Freemasonry, philosophical abstraction, and ultimately the terrible clarity of captivity during Napoleon's occupation of Moscow, where a peasant soldier named Platón Karatáev teaches him that life's meaning cannot be grasped by the intellect but only lived. Prince Andrew Bolkónski, brilliant and restless, seeks glory on the battlefield only to find, lying wounded beneath the sky at Austerlitz, that everything he valued—ambition, reputation, Napoleon himself—is vanity compared to “that lofty infinite sky.” Princess Mary Bolkónskaya, plain-faced and deeply devout, endures her tyrannical father's rages while cultivating an inner spiritual life that proves, in the end, more durable and transformative than any worldly achievement.

Around these seekers, Tolstoy peoples his world with hundreds of characters drawn with unsurpassed psychological precision. Natásha Rostóva blazes through the book as an embodiment of vital, instinctive life—singing, dancing, falling in love—before settling into the robust contentment of motherhood. Nicholas Rostóv, her brother, is the honest, unintellectual soldier who distrusts philosophy but recognizes moral beauty when he encounters it. The scheming Prince Vasíli operates not through deliberate villainy but through the habitual, almost unconscious opportunism of a man of the world. Even minor figures—the timid Captain Túshin, heroically manning his battery without orders; the self-satisfied Berg, forever calculating his advantages; Márya Dmítrievna, the fearsome society dragon who speaks only Russian—are rendered with a fullness that makes each feel like the center of their own novel.

What distinguishes War and Peace from every other historical novel is Tolstoy's insistence on thinking alongside his narrative. His battle scenes—particularly the chaos of Austerlitz and the grinding horror of Borodinó—deliberately subvert the conventions of military history. No general commands events; soldiers cannot see what is happening ten yards away; plans dissolve on contact with reality. This is not cynicism but a profound philosophical argument: that history is made not by great men issuing orders but by the aggregate of millions of individual wills, and that the leaders we credit with shaping events are merely the figures who happen to stand at the prow of a ship they do not steer.

Kutúzov emerges as Tolstoy's great counterexample to Napoleon—not a genius but a man wise enough to submit his personal will to the larger movement of events, to understand that “patience and time” accomplish more than any brilliant stratagem. In Tolstoy's telling, Kutúzov's greatness lies precisely in what his critics called weakness: his refusal to fight unnecessary battles, his willingness to appear indecisive, his recognition that the French army was destroying itself and needed only to be allowed to do so.

The Second Epilogue, in which Tolstoy abandons narrative entirely for a philosophical essay on free will, necessity, and the nature of historical causation, has divided readers since the book's publication. It is demanding, repetitive, and occasionally maddening. It is also essential. The entire novel has been building toward the question it poses: if every human action is determined by prior causes, how can we experience ourselves as free? Tolstoy's answer—that necessity and freedom are not contradictions but two aspects of a single reality, visible from different vantage points—may not fully satisfy, but the honesty of the wrestling is itself moving.

The Maude translation captures Tolstoy's characteristic mixture of plainness and profundity, his ability to shift from the comic precision of a society drawing room to the cosmic scale of a battlefield meditation without ever losing his grip on the particular. The French passages, the military jargon, the dozens of Russian names and patronymics—all of it can feel overwhelming at first, but Tolstoy's method rewards persistence. He teaches you how to read him as you go.

What finally makes War and Peace inexhaustible is its stubborn insistence that the examined life and the lived life are both necessary and neither is sufficient alone. Pierre's philosophical torments are real but insufficient without Natásha's vitality; Andrew's intellectual brilliance is sterile without love; Nicholas's practical goodness needs Mary's spiritual depth. The novel's deepest argument is that meaning is found not in any single answer but in the full, contradictory experience of being alive—in the tension between war and peace, between the individual will and the vast currents of history, between the desire for transcendence and the humble, irreducible fact of our mortal bodies.

Reviewed 2026-03-29

Notable Quotes

Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake.

Prince Andrew's bitter advice to Pierre on the eve of departing for war, revealing his disillusionment with marriage and domestic life — marriage, disillusionment, ambition

If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars.

Prince Andrew's sharp reply to Pierre's idealistic objection to fighting a war against Napoleon — war, duty, idealism vs. realism

How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!

Prince Andrew lies wounded on the battlefield of Austerlitz, gazing up at the sky and realizing the vanity of his ambitions for glory — transcendence, mortality, disillusionment, sky imagery

He used to say that there are only two sources of human vice—idleness and superstition, and only two virtues—activity and intelligence.

Describing old Prince Bolkónski's philosophy, which governs the austere regime he imposes on his daughter Princess Mary at Bald Hills — discipline, education, Russian character

What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?

Pierre's existential crisis at the Torzhók post station after his duel with Dolokhov, spiraling into the fundamental questions that will drive his search for meaning — existential crisis, meaning of life, philosophy

All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.

Pierre's despairing conclusion during his post-duel crisis, before his transformative encounter with the Freemason Bazdéev — knowledge, wisdom, humility

He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life.

The Freemason Bazdéev's central teaching to Pierre about knowing God—that understanding comes through lived experience, not intellectual argument — faith, reason vs. experience, spiritual seeking

Prince Vasíli was not a man who deliberately thought out his plans. Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own advantage. He was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom getting on had become a habit.

Tolstoy's devastating characterization of Prince Vasíli's unconscious scheming, revealing how social climbing can become second nature — social ambition, self-deception, character

Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly.

An authorial observation on the friendship between Pierre and Prince Andrew, reflecting on the subtle mechanics of human relationships — friendship, human nature, social relations

They wept because they were friends, and because they were kindhearted, and because they—friends from childhood—had to think about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over.... But those tears were pleasant to them both.

The Countess Rostóva and Anna Mikháylovna weep together over the money given for Borís's military outfit, a moment of genuine emotion amid practical necessity — friendship, money, aging, sentimentality

Nobody wants me! There is no one to help me or pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved.

Young Nicholas Rostóv, wounded and alone by a campfire after his first experience of battle, longing for the warmth and safety of home — war, loneliness, youth, loss of innocence

The soldier did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive. What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!

Pierre's liberating laughter during his captivity by the French, realizing that no physical imprisonment can contain his inner life — freedom, captivity, the soul, spiritual awakening

And all that is me, all that is within me, and it is all I! And they caught all that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!

Pierre gazing at the stars during captivity, experiencing an ecstatic awareness of the vastness of his inner life that no prison can diminish — inner freedom, consciousness, transcendence

Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's all.

Nicholas Rostóv's passionate outburst defending the Emperor's decision to make peace with Napoleon at Tilsit, revealing his need for unquestioning loyalty to sustain his worldview — duty, loyalty, anti-intellectualism

It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.

Nicholas Rostóv reassuring his wife Countess Mary during a moment of marital tension, articulating Tolstoy's conviction that love transforms perception — love, beauty, marriage

I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy.

Countess Mary's quiet whisper to herself in the First Epilogue, followed immediately by a sigh acknowledging that earthly happiness always points toward something unattainable beyond it — happiness, spiritual longing, domestic life

That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not be cast in the false mold of a European hero—the supposed ruler of men—that history has invented.

Tolstoy's culminating assessment of Kutúzov, arguing that true greatness consists not in imposing one's will on events but in submitting to the deeper movement of history — greatness, humility, leadership, philosophy of history

To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception of greatness.

Tolstoy's reworking of Hegel's famous aphorism, concluding his defense of Kutúzov and his critique of the 'great man' theory of history — greatness, perception, history

Kutúzov never talked of 'forty centuries looking down from the Pyramids,' of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said nothing about himself, adopted no pose, always appeared to be the simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most ordinary things.

Tolstoy contrasting Kutúzov's genuine simplicity with Napoleon's theatrical self-aggrandizement — simplicity, authenticity, leadership

In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship the movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.

Tolstoy's metaphor in the Second Epilogue for how leaders appear to cause events that are actually the product of vast impersonal forces — causation, philosophy of history, illusion of power

A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life.

Tolstoy's argument in the Second Epilogue that the consciousness of freedom is inseparable from life itself, regardless of what deterministic reasoning may demonstrate — free will, consciousness, philosophy

He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.

Tolstoy's sweeping claim in the Second Epilogue that freedom is the fundamental axis along which all human experience is measured — freedom, human nature, philosophy

She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable, delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking root would so cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed.

Natásha's gradual recovery from grief, described with one of Tolstoy's most beautiful natural metaphors — grief, healing, nature, resilience

It was as if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern and the intricate, skillful, artistic work on its sides, that previously seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless, was suddenly shown up in unexpected and striking beauty.

Princess Mary's face transformed by love when Rostóv enters the room, revealing how her years of inner spiritual labor become suddenly visible on the surface — inner beauty, love, transformation