Yet it remains almost certainly the best novel ever published. It’s for sure the best – if densest – I’ve ever read, but admittedly I’ve made it my habit in the last twenty years to only read non-fiction or classic novels by dead white males. Thus, most serious readers would probably say I am not the best judge of fiction. I read Leo Tolstoy’s 1300-page tome about three years ago over the summer, when I could take it outside with a coffee and relax in a plastic Adirondack chair till almost 10 p.m.
Of course, it’s impossible say absolutely that War and Peace is being improperly ignored these days, but several personal experiences bear me out: my own difficulty finding friends and other thoughtful readers – including those lucky enough to be in book clubs – with whom to discuss the book; fast technology, and the proclivity of almost everyone who can read even slightly to be on their instant-messaging smart-phones much of their waking hours; and finally, War and Peace’s rock bottom prices. Completed in the late 1860s over a grueling decade, and most recently translated from Russian in 2007, the great volume is currently selling for less than fifteen dollars at Amazon.com. A used copy can be purchased for under two dollars.
It is criminal, you say, which is ironic since translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky also recently translated Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Moreover, the two long-deceased Russian authors are, in certain places in both books, made to sound eerily similar. This is not in the least a criticism of either of the authors or the translators, as both books are masterpieces of nineteenth century Russian literature.
How to briefly describe War and Peace? It is an historical fiction. It’s a romance novel. It is Tolstoy’s insignificant philosophy of history. It’s a summary of the Napoleonic Wars. I came to see it as the gripping story of a Russian count’s illegitimate adult child – Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov – and how he grows up to become a man in the truest sense of the word. Divided into four volumes and two epilogues, War and Peace opens and closes with fat, awkward yet lovable Pierre trying to fit into high society. Richer than God, he adores children, searches for life’s meaning – including by joining the freemasons – marries twice, literally chases Napoleon to kill him, and ultimately finds true happiness as a husband and father. Like virtually all nineteenth century European novels – including, despite the interminable chopping off of heads, in A Tale of Two Cities – War and Peace has a satisfying and happy ending.
As a simple reader of the great novel, I found it hard not to fall in love with Catherine the Great’s graceful and charismatic grandson, Tsar Alexander I, forgetting for awhile his brutal suppression of Jewish communities and his vehement devotion to recruiting child soldiers. This irrational admiration was spurred by the love of the tsar by the character Nickolai Rostov – a member of one of Tolstoy’s five fictitious aristocratic families (the one that is virtually broke). Rostov fights for the Russian government in the disastrous Battle of Austerlitz. Napoleon is the fascinating narrator of his own thoughts as he retreats with his army of maybe two-hundred thousand men and horses from a deserted and burning Moscow just before the merciless winter of 1812.
Besides the fascinating history of this Napoleonic war, War and Peace illuminates the thought-provoking history of pre-Bolshevik Russia. What was it like to be a member of the genteel society that helped spawn Karl Marx and socialist revolutionaries? Read the book to find out.
As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.
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