War and Peace

Considered by many to be the greatest novel ever written, Tolstoy's masterpiece is a story of family life set against the backdrop of war. The novel begins in 1805 in the crowded and gossip-filled rooms of a St Petersburg party and follows the fortunes of the aristocratic Bolkonsky and Rostov families as Napoleon's armies sweep through Europe, culminating in the French invasion of Russia in 1812 and Napoleon's defeat. Tolstoy's vast novel takes in both the epic sweep of national events and the private experience of individuals, from the keen young soldier to Napoleon himself, and at the heart of it all the complicated triangle of affection that binds his central characters. 'Against the moment when you want to read it, or to reread it, buy the new Penguin translation by Anthony Briggs.'
Daily Telegraph An extract from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy During the interval there was a cool draught in Hélène’s box as the door opened and in walked Anatole, stopping and trying not to brush against anyone. ‘Allow me to introduce my brother,’ said Hélène, her eyes shifting uneasily from Natasha to Anatole. Natasha turned her pretty little head towards the handsome adjutant and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was just as handsome close to as he had been from a distance, sat down beside her and said this was a delight he had long been waiting for, ever since the Naryshkins’ ball, where he had had the unforgettable pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more astute and straightforward with women than he ever was in male company. He talked with an easy directness, and Natasha was agreeably surprised to discover that this man, the butt of so much gossip, had nothing formidable about him – quite the reverse, his face wore the most innocent, cheery and open-hearted of smiles. Kuragin asked what she thought of the opera, and told her that at the last performance Semyonova had fallen down on stage. ‘Oh, by the way, Countess,’ he said, suddenly treating her like a close friend of long standing, ‘we’re getting up a fancy-dress ball. You must come – it’s going to be great fun. They’re all getting together at the Arkharovs’. Please come. You will, won’t you?’ As he spoke he never took his smiling eyes off Natasha, her face, her neck, her exposed arms. Natasha knew for certain he was besotted with her. She liked this, yet she could feel the temperature rising and she was beginning to feel somehow cornered and constrained in his presence. When she wasn’t looking at him she could sense him gazing at her shoulders, and she found herself trying to catch his eye to make him look at her face. But when she looked into his eyes she was shocked to realize that the usual barrier of modesty that existed between her and other men was no longer there between the two of them. It had taken five minutes for her to feel terribly close to this man, and she scarcely knew what was happening to her. Whenever she turned away she bristled at the thought that he might seize her from behind by her bare arm and start kissing her on the neck. They were going on about nothing in particular, yet she felt closer to him than she had ever been to any other man. Natasha kept glancing round at Hélène and her father for help – what did it all mean? – but Hélène was deep in conversation with a general and didn’t respond to her glance, and her father’s eyes conveyed nothing but their usual message, ‘Enjoying yourself? Jolly good. I’m so pleased.’ There was an awkward silence, during which Anatole, the personification of cool determination, never took his voracious eyes off her, and Natasha broke it by asking whether he liked living in Moscow. She coloured up the moment the question was out of her mouth. She couldn’t help feeling there was something improper about even talking to him. Anatole smiled an encouraging smile. ‘Oh, I didn’t like it much at first. Well, what is it that makes a town nice to live in? It’s the pretty women, isn’t it? Well, now I do like it, very much indeed,’ he said, with a meaningful stare. ‘You will come to the fancy-dress ball, Countess? Please come,’ he said. Putting his hand out to touch her bouquet he lowered his voice and added in French, ‘You’ll be the prettiest woman there. Do come, dear Countess, and give me this flower as your pledge.’ Natasha didn’t understand a word of this – any more than he did – but she felt that behind his incomprehensible words there was some dishonourable intention. Not knowing how to respond, she turned away as if she hadn’t heard him. But the moment she turned away she could feel him right behind her, very close. ‘Now what? Is he embarrassed? Is he angry? Should I put things right?’ she wondered. She couldn’t help turning round. She looked him straight in the eyes. One glance at him, standing so close, with all that self-assurance and the warmth of his sweet smile, and she was lost. She stared into his eyes, and her smile was the mirror-image of his. And again she sensed with horror there was no barrier between the two of them. The curtain rose again. Anatole strolled out of the box, a picture of composure and contentment. Natasha went back to her father’s box, completely taken by the new world she found herself in. All that was happening before her eyes now seemed absolutely normal. By contrast, all previous thoughts of her fiancé, Princess Marya, her life in the country, never even crossed her mind. It was as if it all belonged to the distant past. It's time to read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy...
Birth, death, violence, love, sex...

When she wasn’t looking at him she could sense him looking at her shoulders … she was shocked to realize that the usual barrier of modesty was no longer there between the two of them … she bristled at the thought that he might seize her from behind and start kissing her on the neck … she glanced round at him, thrilled and flushed with pleasure. He gazed at her with gleaming eyes and a tender smile … It’s early nineteenth-century Russia and Natasha Rostov is engaged to a handsome aristocrat, but as he has delayed the wedding and fled Russia for several months, can she resist the flattering attentions of a notorious seducer?
Natasha’s brother is also in a predicament having been cruelly fleeced by an expert gambler. Can he survive this crisis and piece his life back together again? One impression tormented him – those broad, reddish-coloured hands with the hairs curling out from the shirt-cuffs, those hands that held him in their power … Why is he doing this to me? …The total reached forty-three thousand … That’s it, I’m finished … a bullet through my head … it’s the only way out …
While these emotional situations are unfolding, young men are suffering in the theatre of war . . . Get down! The smoking shell was spinning like a top … Is this death then? ... I don’t want to die … I love life … I love this grass, the earth, the air … They carried him to the dressing station … A doctor in a bloodstained apron came out of the tent, holding a cigar … he wanted a break … They showed a wounded man his amputated leg, still wearing its boot and covered with coagulated blood … My God! … What’s he doing here? …
As are women in the throes of childbirth … Her eyes shone like a child’s, full of fear and anxiety … I love all of you … I’ve never done anybody any harm … Why should I suffer like this? … Help me … The most fearful scream – it couldn’t be hers, she couldn’t have screamed like that - came from inside the room … I loved all of you, and look what you have done to me was the message on her dead face … something small and red lay mewling and snuffling in the trembling white hands …
Sounds like a popular soap opera? So it should, because these are the fundamentals of human experience and some of the world’s best stories from ancient times to the present day. Set against the backdrop of a vast country under dire threat and containing fourteen hundred pages, five hundred characters, and a serious attempt to resolve the questions of how best to live life, this is the basis of the world’s finest novel, War and Peace. It is first and foremost a cornucopia of compelling narrative entertainment on a grand scale, but on a more personal level there are a series of moving stories brimming with intimate detail and with shocking relevance to our own lives and times. Now available is a new translation of this great classic, the first for half a century, and the first by a man for more than a hundred years. The idiom has been sensitively updated, so as not to betray the original through the vulgarity of sweeping modernisation, but instead to alter the tone gently from the delicate, upper-class English of earlier versions to the kind of vigorous, ordinary speech, which directly reflects Tolstoy’s demotic Russian. Always been meaning to get round to reading War and Peace? Now is the time. There is no excuse not to.