War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), 1869
★ 4.17 from 380.6k ratings on Goodreads
Five families, one invasion, and the small domestic hours that turn out to matter more than the battles. Read it for the people, not the history. A vast, slow-moving world of family rooms and battlefields, where grand historical sweep sits beside intimate, philosophical reflection.
Feels like awe, melancholy and hope. About war, love and family.
Who it’s for
You may enjoy it if you like long novels that follow several families through love, war and changing fortunes. Be prepared for real length and stretches where battles and historical argument take over from the domestic story.
Why read it
It offers a wide view of people under pressure, from drawing rooms to invasion, and the domestic moments stay with you as much as the battles.
Pages from the book
Grief does its healing underground, months before anyone notices.
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. The wound had begun to heal from within. The seconds between being certain the child is dead and lifting the curtain.
“All is over,” he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find it empty and that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the curtain aside and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could not find the baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about till he lay across the bed with his head lower than the pillow, and was smacking his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly. What it costs to keep playing a great man after the greatness has gone.
Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and for which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of him, was being done. And he fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary greatness, and again—as a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing something for itself—he submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him. Leo Tolstoy.Tolstoy began with a novel about a Decembrist returning from exile, kept pushing the story further back, and landed in 1805. He rewrote the book some eight times.
Books that feel like this
The Odyssey
Homer, -800
The first great story about a journey home — and every stop along the way is a good reason to give up.
More by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy, 1878
A society novel about a marriage coming apart and a landowner trying to build a meaningful life, full of dinner tables, fields, jealousy and philosophy.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is War and Peace for me?
- You may enjoy it if you like long novels that follow several families through love, war and changing fortunes. Be prepared for real length and stretches where battles and historical argument take over from the domestic story.
- What is War and Peace like?
- A vast, slow-moving world of family rooms and battlefields, where grand historical sweep sits beside intimate, philosophical reflection. Feels like awe, melancholy and hope. About war, love and family.
- What should I read after War and Peace?
- If you liked War and Peace, try East of Eden (John Steinbeck), Beneath a Scarlet Sky (Mark T. Sullivan) and The Odyssey (Homer).
A taste of the feed
The unnerving peace of a world that doesn't care about our wars.
It all made Pino realize that the earth did not know war, that nature would go on no matter what horror one man might inflict on another. Nature didn’t care a bit about men and their need to kill and conquer.
Beneath a Scarlet Sky · Mark T. Sullivan
What the greatest of the Greek heroes would trade for a day of paid labour.
“I spake; Achilles quickly answered me:— ‘Noble Ulysses, speak not thus of death, As if thou couldst console me. I would be A laborer on earth, and serve for hire Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, Rather than reign o’er all who have gone down To death. Speak rather of my noble son, Whether or not he yet has joined the wars To fight among the foremost of the host.
The Odyssey · Homer
The night sky as a door that suddenly opens in you.
He did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul, overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the horizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire sky. The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were slumbering till morning. The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars.
The Brothers Karamazov · Fyodor Dostoevsky
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