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Published to coincide with the centenary of Tolstoy's death, here is an exciting new edition of one of the great literary works of world literature. Tolstoy's epic masterpiece captures with unprecedented immediacy the broad sweep of life during the Napoleonic wars and the brutal invasion of Russia. Balls and soirées, the burning of Moscow, the intrigues of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles, the quiet moments of everyday life--all in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed.The Maudes' translation of Tolstoy's epic masterpiece has long been considered the best English version, and now for the first time it has been revised to bring it fully into line with modern approaches to the text. French passages are restored, Anglicization of Russian names removed, and outmoded expressions updated. A new introduction by Amy Mandelker considers the novel's literary and historical context, the nature of the work, and Tolstoy's artistic and philosophical aims. New, expanded notes provide historical background and identifications, as well as insight into Russian life and society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (487)

Tolstoy would be proud
I bought the Volokhonsky/Pevear translation after unknowingly buying the Bromfield version. This version has all the original french intact, translated in the footnotes. I love that touch. The translation is beautifully done and there is a fantastic appendix with historical tidbits (great for someone like me who is somewhat fuzzy on this part of history). This binding is also the one for commuters, it's about a light and small as a 1000+ page book can be.
This is the translation to read if you want to read Tolstoy in all it's glory (other than reading the original Russian!). Steer clear of the Bromfield translation, which touts itself as the "original version" although it lacks the French and about 300 pages. Maybe I will read it after this one, just to see the differences but I consider this the true version.

War and peace Leo Tolstoy
I read the original in Russian language and this translation is as close to the original language as you canget!

Challenging, and well worth it.
My first attempt at reading Wolf Hall fizzled. I couldn't get into it. About two months later, I started reading it again-and I couldn't put it down.
This wasn't the easiest book to read, but the challenge is well worth it.This isn't a brainless pop culture thriller that you can breeze through---but it IS a page turner.The characters, period and places are masterfully fleshed out. I found that I had to do some English history research to better understand the conflicts between some of the players---and that helped my understanding of the plots. This is high caliber authorship; I understand why it won the Booker Prize.

Confused by so many editions of War and Peace
First, I love War and Peace by Tolstoy.This will be my fourth reading and as usual I am on Chapter 30 and overwhelmed by so many characters.Wonderful!I bought it for my kindle last week and who knows which version downloaded.

This morning I purchased paperback the translation I want to look at (Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) so I can figure out if this is the translation on the kindle.
Specific ID:
ISBN-10: 1400079985
ISBN-13: 978-1400079988

I really wanted hard back on this translation, but when you click on hardback, you get a different translation.Click around and you go all over the place to different versions.I guess if I were a serious reader, I would learn Russian and read it in the original language.

But I am really enjoying this and will probably get a Maude translation in the future.

An Entertaining Classic
I have officially finished the book that is usually used as a benchmark for "hard to read" and "hard to finish" in what amounts to two months or so. I feel suitably smug.

In Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie writes of a mania (a specifically Indian one, according to the book's narrator, although I would disagree) that centers around a desire to capture the whole world, in a book or a piece of art or whatever else. He discusses people who start trying to tell one ...more I have officially finished the book that is usually used as a benchmark for "hard to read" and "hard to finish" in what amounts to two months or so. I feel suitably smug.

In Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie writes of a mania (a specifically Indian one, according to the book's narrator, although I would disagree) that centers around a desire to capture the whole world, in a book or a piece of art or whatever else. He discusses people who start trying to tell one story and just expand and expand and expand and the farther they do so the less of "everything" they seem to be showing. One could describe that novel as such, but it seems an even better description for War and Peace. Tolstoy set out to write about a specific event in Russian history, and realized that to describe it he needed greater context. So he moved back to show the lives of the people involved in that event, only to realize the need for greater context; so he moved back and back and back until he had a book that began at the turn of the 19th century, was mostly about the War of 1812, and never even gets to the Decemberists, as originally intended. His ideas do very similar things to his chronology, as he tries to encompass so much, and then more, and more. This all leads to why it is such an unconventional book, and at times one in which the author's desires hamstring parts of it--but they are hamstrung so spectacularly.

It is probably fitting that I read such an iconoclastic and sprawling book in an unusual way. Do not let the "Read from February 05 to October 05, 2010" up there fool you, it actually took me about two months and ten days to read this book--there were extenuating circumstances. I am such a nerd, that when I gleefully signed up for a Tolstoy and Dostoevsky class in my last semester of college, the centerpieces of which were this book and The Brothers Karamazov, I went and ordered all of the books immediately, with two months before the class started, because I was just that excited. Each of these momentous novels was given about a month of our syllabus. I don't know if anybody in the class actually managed to read War and Peace quite that quickly, but I decided that it was my top priority (other classes were technically more important, but ehhhhh...) and plowed away until I'd gotten to page 986 on March 16th, and realized that I just could not finish the book and continue my semester. Most people probably skimmed, but I loved War and Peace too much to do that to it, so I just stopped reading it entirely, and waited to finish once I had graduated. This did mean that class discussions spoiled the ending for me, but it's not exactly a shocker anyway.

Fast forward to September 5th and I finally felt free enough in my time to finish the novel. It's worth noting that it took me a whole other month to read a chunk that was about a third the length of what I read back in February--but it's also worth noting that jumping back in after reading and studying so much in the interim, nothing felt removed and none of the characters had been forgotten. Not even a little. It was difficult, however, because it is near the end of the novel that Tolstoy starts really doing the things that have annoyed so many readers for generations. I think that some people come away from War and Peace especially sour because of these ending bits, and remember it as a book filled with overlong author's screeds, when really it is an exciting, amusing, funny, moving, interesting, and beautiful novel for the most part, that gets a bit too didactic just at the end. (In a book of this length, a small problem can still take up a few hundred pages, of course...)

War and Peace is a book that has had so very much written about it already, making it kind of useless to go into too much depth--and that's fine, because to sum up my feelings about every major aspect of this book would mean a review at least half the length of the novel itself. Surprise! There is a lot going on here! In the end I give it five stars even though there are some serious flaws, and this is for two reasons:

First of all, the novel feels like it's author trying to grapple with something. Well, with many things, but a few issues above all others, and in that sense even his failings are fascinating and, often, spectacular. Tolstoy was an extremely smart motherf*****, and he poured everything into this novel, and if that means a few times when the author stops writing his novel to rant at you in-person, well that's still pretty fascinating. It's only at the very end that these rants become unwieldy and frustrating, because they're unnecessary--near the end, Tolstoy will make a point beautifully in a sentence or paragraph, and then use pages upon pages to explain the point he already made. However, again, this is fascinating if one is looking at the character of the author himself. Also, his ideas are interesting to see laid out... he just maybe should have done a little less of it.

Secondly, because these asides only begin in the last third or so, and only get really bad right near the end, and frankly by that time Tolstoy has given us so much good novel that he can be excused for a few problems. Every character in War and Peace feels like a human being living their life, and each one gets many of the sort of character arcs that are usually only designated one to a character in your average (or far, far above-average) novel. Despite the length, the prose (when it's actually still a novel) moves briskly, the chapters are short (it was originally serialized, after all), and the events and characters are funny, heartbreaking, exciting, all while being as profound and thoughtful as people expect when they think "Russian novel," but they do it effortlessly, which is not, I think, the expectation. In all that time, there is enough material (and not just in terms of length) for three or four masterpieces of fiction writing--those three or four novels would be quite similarly written, and about the same characters, but they would be masterpieces nonetheless, and so again, I can excuse some didactic flaws near the end.

Will I skip one or two chunks right near the end when I read War and Peace again? Probably. Will I be excited to read War and Peace again someday? Extremely--many, many, many times. People like Nikolai, Pierre, and Natasha will stick with me the rest of my life, that's a given, but smaller ones like Denisov, Dolokhov, and even Tikhon will do the same. Certain scenes were so beautiful, so perfect, that even being entirely aware of how the bottom will drop out when the consequences come won't keep me from thinking back to them and sighing, and other scenes gave me the sort of genuine physical reaction that only the best of books ever have (like, ahem, The Count of Monte Cristo). Maybe it isn't for everyone, but I dunno, it should be. ... Read more

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Considered one of the best books ever written, "War and Peace" has remained in the upper echelon of world literature because it masterfully captures an intimate view of humanity on an epic scale. Through the use of fictional narrative, Tolstoy utilizes a huge cast of characters, centering on five aristocratic Russian families in 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars. These characters, particularly Pierre, Prince Andrei, and the beautiful Natasha, demonstrate different human struggles that are affected by their history, present era, and culture. They simultaneously develop the concepts on which Tolstoy expounds in the thematic essays interspersed throughout the narrative: a person's free will and the shaping of historical events, morality in an imperfect world, youth and age, marriage and death, and, of course, war and peace, in a work so groundbreaking that it was not considered a novel when published in 1865. In redefining the fictional novel, Tolstoy's genius has explored what is fundamentally human with scope and Russian spirit. Presented here in this edition is the second of two volumes. ... Read more

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A play by Leo Tolstoy. ... Read more

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The Cossacks is a short novelby Leo Tolstoy, published in 1863. The novel was acclaimed by Ivan Bunin as one of the finest in the language. -- from Wikipedia ... Read more

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This collection of Tolstoy's stories includes "Sevastopol," "Two Hussars," "Albert," "What Men Live By," "Master and Man," "How Much Land Does a Man Need?," "The Death of Ivan Ilych," "The Three Hermits," and the title piece. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Tolstoy's short masterpieces
This book represents stories from Tolstoy's both periods. "What Men Live By?", "Master and Man", "How Much Land Does A Man Need?" and "The Death of Ivan Ilych", are among his best parables written during his second period (and they are indeed some of the best parables ever written). But it is his early and less-known fiction that makes this collection so valuable. "Sevastopol in May 1855", "Albert" and "Two Hussars" in particular, are great examples of Tolstoy's art. They are largely overshadowed by "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" and are lesser-known, but equally great. In these stories, one can see Tolstoy's familiar `life and death' theme, as well as his mastery in revealing the inner thoughts of his characters, and furnishing the so-called `furniture' of his stories. Notice the description of a piece of music, "illumining the inner world of every listener with an unexpectedly clear and tranquilizing light." in "Albert"; death of Praskukhin in "Sevastopol in May 1855"; Ilyin's inner thoughts, intermingled with street events as he walks, in "Two Hussars" and several other examples. Structures of these stories are highly original, and gave people opportunity to criticize Tolstoy's fiction for lack of apparent structure. I strongly recommend this book for serious lovers of literature.

Tolstoy at his best
Tolstoy is a masterful writer, and this marvelous collection of his short stories is excellent proof of this.Of the 9 stories contained in the collection, 3 in particular are worth noting: The Raid wasan interesting tale of life on the "frontier" of Ukraine - and is not unlike a Louis L'Amour viginette.Tolstoy pulls no punches here, and the line between "good guy" and "bad guy" is blurred.Two Hussars is another favorite of mine, mostly because of the way in which he writes the characters - so real you can imagine meeting them in person in some dimly-lit pub.How Much Land Does a Man Need?is the third short story that resonnated with me, as it wrestles with the typically Russian theme of a man and his attachment to the land, but also with the broader human theme of need versus greed.(Especially resonant in our own time, what with ozone depletion, increased consumption of fossil fuels, and over population.)While the other stories are good, these 3 in particular make the book worth the purchase price.Don't think of it as "Tolstoy" - read it for its own sake - its a thumping good book.

Tolstoy on a smaller, more managable scale.
I was attracted to this volume by Calvino's recommendation of 'Two Hussars', a gorgeous, bipartite story of Turgenev-like transparency, about the respective, mirroring adventures of a father and son, and their relationships with the army, their servants, the local society they briefly enter, and the women they meet.

In one sense it is a tale about history, about the raucous gambling, drinking and dancing of the early 19th century, and the more sedate, stolid bourgeoisification in its middle.The climax, where narrative and character gives way to suspended time and a tableaux of nature, is heartstopping.

The other stories in this collection are similarly schizophrenic, ranging from early works in the 1850s influenced by Tolstoy's time in the army; and the later didactic, moralistic works, including some of his most famous, 'The Death of Ivan Illyich' and 'How much land does a man need?' (which Joyce thought the greatest story ever written).

the translations by Louise and Aylmer Maude, nearly a century old, are still very readable, probably because they were friends of Tolstoy's, and had greatr knowledge of his methods and intentions.The annotation and 1982 introduction needs updating, though. ... Read more

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"In the Days of Serfdom" and Other Stories, originally published in 1911, presents in miniature themes developed in Tolstoy's longer works War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The compelling stories in this collection have largely been ignored by contemporary scholars and teachers because of their general unavailability. Now in paperback for the first time since their original publication, the stories reveal new thematic and stylisitic dimensions to Tolstoy's oeuvre.

While not all of the stories deal with actual serfdom, they all address the legacy of serfdom, of choicelessness, in Tolstoy's Russia. These stories are also thoroughly modern, concerned as they are with the market economy, changing values, and women's roles in society. Artistically and historically significant, they constitute ethical and spiritual questionings that deal with lives out of control, with characters making sense of the experience of living.

Customer Reviews (1)

A fine collection of some little-known stories
This collection consists of the 1863 novella "Polikoushka" (which the Maudes chose to translate as "In the Days of Serfdom") and the stories "A Prayer," "Korney Vasilyev," "Strawberries," "Why?" and "God's Way and Man's," each written in 1905 or 1906.It might seem an odd choice to juxtapose works written over 40 years apart, especially since Tolstoy's great religious conversion--generally seen as the major dividing line in his writing career--took place around 1880, but there's actually more continuity here than one might expect.

"Polikoushka" deals with events surrounding the recruitment of troops from an estate into the army.A member of a peasant family is chosen as the estate's last recruit instead of the title character, a domestic serf, but a tragedy that occurs to Polikoushka changes the course of things."A Prayer" is Tolstoy's brief attempt to come to terms with the tragedy of a child's death. "Korney Vasilyev" deals with a man who returns home to make amends many years after crippling his daughter and leaving his wife upon learning of his wife's adultery. "Strawberries" sets the idle chatter of liberal aristocrats against the simple life of the berry-gathering peasant children living near them. "Why?" tells the story of a Polish revolutionary who is sent to Siberia and of the woman who joins him there to marry him and some years later tries to escape with him. "God's Way and Man's" is about two imprisoned 1870's radicals, one of whom finds peace in Tolstoy's Sermon on the Mount-based version of Christianity shortly before his execution, and the other of whom is shattered to learn of the futility of his revolutionary pursuits.

All of these works show Tolstoy's impressive sensitivity toward his characters, andwe see much of his disillusionment with the artificial customs of Russian life, from the pointless meeting of the steward with the proprietress in "Polikoushka" to the absurd wording of the death sentence in "God's Way and Man's.""Polikoushka" is unusual among Tolstoy's pre-conversion work for focusing on peasants, which helps it seem at home among his later works.As for the other five stories, although by the time he wrote them Tolstoy had come to believe that the only worthwhile purpose of art was to provide a clear moral and infect the audience with the spirit of brotherly love, these stories (especially the longer ones) are really more nuanced than that.Just as Tolstoy had a hard time putting the values of Tolstoyism into practice in his personal life, it seems that in his art he couldn't help writing works more complex and interesting than what he believed to be appropriate (though he still certainly makes his message come through).

The back of the book claims that these stories are "now in paperback for the first time since their original publication," which isn't really true: the Gordon Spence-translated "Divine and Human and Other Stories" contains three of the stories (there's also a Peter Sekirin-translated book called "Divine and Human" that contains all five of the 1905-06 stories from this volume, but that book seems to be available only in hardcover).However, I'm not aware of any English-language book containing "Polikoushka," which is a very good work and the highlight of this collection, so I would tend to recommend this volume over either of the others.

These stories don't quite reach the level of Tolstoy's very best short works (I have in mind "The Death of Ivan Ilich," "The Kreutzer Sonata," and "Master and Man"), but they're still quite good, so if you've liked some of his other short stories and novellas you should take a look at this volume. ... Read more

Product Description
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer - novelist, essayist, dramatist and philosopher - as well as pacifist Christian anarchist and educational reformer. He was the most influential member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family. His first publications were three autobiographical novels, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852-1856). They tell of a rich landowner's son and his slow realization of the differences between him and his peasants. As a fiction writer Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his masterpieces War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). In their scope, breadth and realistic depiction of 19th-century Russian life, the two books stand at the peak of realist fiction. As a moral philosopher Tolstoy was notable for his ideas on nonviolent resistance through works such as The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894). ... Read more

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Leo Tolstoy's ""Walk in the Light and Twenty-Three Tales"" contains the religious parable ""Walk in the Light While Ye Have Light"", a story set in the ancient Roman Empire which tells the story of Pamphylius and his conversion to Christianity, as well as twenty-three other short stories by the author. Those twenty-three tales include the following: God Sees the Truth, but Waits; A Prisoner in the Caucasus; The Bear-Hunt; What Men Live By; A Spark Neglected Burns the House; Two Old Men; Where Love is, God is; The Story of Iván the Fool; Evil Allures, but Good Endures; Little Girls Wiser Than Men; Ilyás; The Three Hermits; The Imp and the Crust; How Much Land Does a Man Need?; A Grain as Big as a Hen's Egg; The Godson; The Repentant Sinner; The Empty Drum; The Coffee House of Surat; Too Dear; Esarhaddon, King of Assyria; Work, Death and Sickness; and Three questions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

great short stories
Great short story book.Keeping positive in my life, too much violence today. while I was reading my mother picked it up and now she bought a copy for herself. ... Read more

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The Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s.

The novel tells the story of the life and death, at the age of 45, of a high-court judge in 19th-century Russia—a miserable husband, proud father, and upwardly-mobile member of Russia's professional class, the object of Tolstoy's unremitting satire. Living what seems to be a good life, his dreadful relationship with his wife notwithstanding, Ivan Ilyich Golovin bangs his side while putting up curtains in a new apartment intended to reflect his family's superior status in society. Within weeks, he has developed a strange taste in his mouth and a pain that will not go away. Numerous expensive doctors—friends of friends of friends—are visited in their surgeries or called to the judge's bedside, but beyond muttering about blind gut and floating kidneys, they can neither explain nor treat his condition, and it soon becomes clear that Ivan Ilyich is dying.

The second half of the novel records his terror as he battles with the idea of his own death. "I have been here. Now I am going there. Where? ... No, I won't have it!" Oppressed by the length of the process, his wife, daughter, and colleagues—even the physicians—decide not to speak of it, but advise him to stay calm and follow doctors' orders, leaving him to wrestle with how this terrible thing could befall a man who has lived so well.

He spends his last three days screaming. He realizes he is "done for, there was no way back, the end was here, the absolute end ..." One hour before his death, in a moment of clarity, he sees that he has not, after all, lived well, but has lived only for himself. After months of dwelling on his own anguish, he suddenly feels pity for the people he's leaving behind, and hopes his death will set them free. With that thought, his pain disappears. He hears someone say, "He's gone." He whispers to himself, "Death has gone," and draws his last breath. -- from Wikipedia ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1910.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Originally published in 1904.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics edition is a facsimile reprint of a 1903 edition by Grant Richards, London. ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Mohamed El Baradei, Carla Del Ponte, Ruud Lubbers, Louise Arbour, Maude Barlow, Raoul-Marc Jennar, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Shashi Tharoor, Jean Ziegler, Mohammad Khatami, Président de L'assemblée Générale Des Nations Unies, Secrétaire Général Adjoint Des Nations Unies, Klaus Töpfer, Arkady Chevtchenko, Sergio Vieira de Mello, Salem Hanna Khamis, Jorge Sampaio, Hédi Annabi, Josette Sheeran, Cabinet Du Secrétaire Général Des Nations Unies, Kamel Morjane, Peter Piot, John Holmes, Jean Zermatten, Papa Louis Fall, Jan Egeland, Jean-Sélim Kanaan, Edmond Mulet, Antonio Maria Costa, Hassan Bubacar Jallow, Doudou Diène, Olivier de Schutter, Manfred Nowak, Yukiya Amano, Han Seung-Soo, André Azoulay, Ashraf Qazi, Jan Pronk, Anna Tibaijuka, Ibrahim Gambari, Michel Sidibé, Nicolas Michel, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, Sadako Ogata, Yakin Ertürk, Achim Steiner, Chen Jian, Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa, Kjell Magne Bondevik, Prince Aly Khan, Kemal Dervis, Sergueï Ordjonikidze, Sadruddin Aga Khan, Anwarul Chowdhury, Radhika Coomaraswamy, Karen Koning Abuzayd, Vice-Secrétaire Général Des Nations Unies, Alan Doss, Asha-Rose Migiro. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Carla Del Ponte, née le 9 février 1947 à Lugano en Suisse, est une magistrate suisse originaire du Tessin. Anciennement juge d'instruction à Lugano (1981) puis procureure du canton du Tessin (1985) et procureure générale de la Confédération suisse (1994), elle fut nommée en août 1999 procureure du Tribunal pénal international pour l'ex-Yougoslavie (TPIY) et du Tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda (TPIR). Elle remplaça ainsi Louise Arbour dans la poursuite des auteurs présumés des violations les plus graves des droits de l'homme. Afin de pouvoir se concentrer uniq...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer - novelist, essayist, dramatist and philosopher - as well as pacifist Christian anarchist and educational reformer. He was the most influential member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family. His first publications were three autobiographical novels, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852-1856). They tell of a rich landowner's son and his slow realization of the differences between him and his peasants. As a fiction writer Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his masterpieces War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). In their scope, breadth and realistic depiction of 19th-century Russian life, the two books stand at the peak of realist fiction. As a moral philosopher Tolstoy was notable for his ideas on nonviolent resistance through works such as The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894). ... Read more