Who wrote the book War and Peace? - Quora Quora Written Jun 5, 2010 Leo Tolstoy ( ), a great 19th century Russian writer. "War and Peace" ( ) is considered one of his greatest novels, as well as one of the greatest novels of all times. The book is long but a must-read. Historically, it describes the time between 1805 and approximately 1815, including Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Tolstoy combines his own perspective on the events and people with the creative narrative of whole bunch of fictional characters and historical figures. They say that somebody asked Tolstoy to briefly tell what "War and Peace" was about. He answered that if could tell the story shorter he would have written a shorter story. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - Book Drum War and Peace Tolstoy In 1800 Prince Nikolai Volkonsky withdrew to his country estate, Yasnaya Polyana, which he controlled with military zeal. His strict ways terrorised his shy daughter Marya, who only married after his death.

Her husband was Nikolai Tolstoy, who served in a hussar regiment during the Napoleonic Wars. Nikolai Tolstoy had a cousin who he was all but engaged to, but he inherited the debts of his profligate father and chose to marry the wealthy Marya instead. Many years later, the fourth son of this union, Count Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), made use of his family history as he wrote War and Peace. Leo Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana in 1828, where his brother Nikolai told him of a hidden green stick upon which was written the secret to universal brotherly love that could bring happiness to the whole world. Tolstoy's mother died when he was two; his father was murdered whilst travelling when Tolstoy was nine years old. He inherited his childhood home from them, but was forced to move to Kazan during his teenage years, where he had a short and disastrous career at the University of Kazan, despite being a keen reader.

He was an admirer of Rousseau , and was torn between reading novels, engaging in earnest philosophical musings and pursuing more earthly pleasures such as drinking, gambling, and visiting brothels. In 1851 he joined Nikolai in the Caucasus, eventually becoming a soldier there. He spent three years in the south of Russia, where he started to write, producing the autobiographical novel Childhood. Afterwards he went on to serve in the Crimea during the war of 1853-56, fighting at the Siege of Sebastopol, which caused him to question the meaningless destruction of war. After the war, Tolstoy established himself as a writer in St Petersburg, publishing the Sebastopol Sketches and other short works. His writing was widely admired, but he soon grew disillusioned with the literary scene and moved back to Yasnaya Polyana. In 1862 he married Sofia Andreevna Bers, with whom he had thirteen children; eight survived childhood. Family life inspired him to settle down and write War and Peace, which was published in 1869. It met with great success, and he followed it with Anna Karenina, published in 1877.

Tolstoy with his wife and family However, after he finished Anna Karenina, Tolstoy underwent a profound spiritual crisis. He wrestled with the questions that had been plaguing him all his life: what was the meaning of life? Was it possible to have a society built on brotherly love, as described in his brother Nikolai's childhood story? In 1878 Tolstoy decided to devote himself to a spiritual life, advocating brotherly love, Christian anarchism and non-violence. This led to him becoming extremely unpopular with the autocratic government and the Orthodox church in Russia. He was excommunicated in 1901, but his fame as a writer and philosopher meant that the government could not silence him. He attracted an international following, including a young Gandhi, who was influenced by his writings on non-violence in The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894). His most ardent admirer was a man called Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov, who became Tolstoy's secretary, and fought jealously with Sofia Andreevna over control of Tolstoy's life and work.

Tolstoy argued frequently and viciously with his wife over his new ascetic lifestyle. In 1910, his home life became so bitter that he fled from Yasnaya Polyana, possibly planning to retire to a monastery. But he fell ill in Astapovo, and died of pneumonia in the stationmaster's house; his wife was not allowed to see him as he lay dying. He is buried at Yasnaya Polyana , in the place where his brother once told him that the green stick of brotherly love was hidden. Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett Tolstoy: A Biography by A.N. Wilson The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year by Jay Parini 'The Hedgehog and the Fox' in Russian Thinkers by Isaiah Berlin On the Translators Louise and Aylmer Maude were an English couple who lived in Russia in the late nineteenth century. During this time they became personal friends of Tolstoy, whose work they translated into English: Aylmer focused on the philosophical works, whilst Louise tackled the literature. Tolstoy, who could read English, approved of their translations and allowed Aylmer to write a biography of himself.

Although War and Peace has been re-translated many times, their translation remains the standard by which all others are judged. 'War and Peace' is Published | World History Project 1869 'War and Peace' is Published Writing War and Peace in the aftermath of the Crimean War, when Russian national feeling was pronounced, Tolstoy was interested most of all in the inner life of Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars. He presents the war of 1812 as a crucial watershed in the culture of his class, the aristocracy, a moment when nobles like the Rostovs and Bolkonskys struggle to break free from the foreign and artificial conventions of their society and begin to live more truly to themselves, on Russian principles. War and Peace is a “national epic” in this sense—the gradual revelation of a “Russian consciousness” (a “Russian Truth” as nationalist critics such as Strakhov would have it) in the life of its characters.

Tolstoy shows the aristocracy switching from the French language to Russian, renouncing haute cuisine for Spartan lunches of rye bread and cabbage soup, adopting national dress, settling as farmers on the land, and rediscovering their country’s native culture, as in the immortal scene when Natasha, a French-educated young countess, dances to a folk song in the Russian style. Source: 'Tolstoy's Real Hero'; Orlando Figes, The New York Review of Books, November 22, 2007 Added by: Colin Harris Tolstoy wrote this enormous not-a-novel between 1863 and 1868, and it is thought that one of his early intentions was to write a domestic saga in the English, Trollopian mode. In his diaries for September, 1865, one can find the following: “Read Trollope, good.” A few days later, he is still admiring Trollope, who “overwhelms me with his skill.” But by October 3rd he has “finished Trollope.

Too much that is conventional.” That is the key to the restless zeal with which he began to write and rewrite his novel, his impatience with conscripted conventions. Though “all of life” may course through the book—birth, death, marriage, warfare—the writing has none of the serial vividness of Thackeray or Dickens or, indeed, Dostoyevsky. (One thinks of the gathering in Dostoyevsky’s “Demons” into which a man bursts shouting, “The suburbs are on fire!”) The undulations of “dramatic conflict” are levelled. Cliff-hangers become hill-walkers. The beginning seems arbitrary (a trivial salon) and the fatigued closure still tends to disappoint (an epilogue concerning quiet domestic life seven years after the great events of 1812). War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Search eText, Read Online, Study, Discuss. Best way to read War and Peace? I just finished Don Quixote and I am currently reading Les Misï¿½rables. I bought those books along with War and Peace to read one after the other, shortest first.

My question is, what is the best and most rewarding way to read War and Peace? I only ask this due to the large cast of characters and historical refrences (I only have a basic understanding of the Napoleonic wars). Should I use a study guide, chapter by chapter summary etc etc. Also what would be the best reading schedule that will allow me to finish the book in 2-3 months (my copy is 1444 pages)? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks! Posted By thekingrat at Thu 21 Jul 2016, 9:22 PM in War and Peace || 9 Replies War and Peace: The Sequel Having just finished War and Peace last week, I am now champing at the bit for information on the continuation of the story. I've scoured the internet, as I am sure many of you on this forum have. I found an intriguing piece from 1996 on an actual sequel written in Russia. It follows the theme of Tolstoy's original concept, "The Decembrists", but apparently with a modern predilection for steaminess. It's called "Pierre and Natasha", authored anonymously, and presumably unavailable to English-reading audiences.

Please read the article at the attached link, and let me know if any of you have any clues as to how to get this book. Posted By Steve Martin at Sat 25 Jul 2015, 6:29 PM in War and Peace || 0 Replies Natasha and the "dirty diaper"? The great courses lecture on War and Peace talks about its ending with Natasha coming in with a dirty diaper. ("Classics of Russian Literature" , taught by Irwin Weil from the teaching company) None of the translations I have seem to contain that. . . WHERE IS IT? D Provine Posted By provine at Fri 21 Feb 2014, 8:08 PM in War and Peace || 0 Replies The Second Epilogue I've re-read War and Peace in just over a month. Wonderful it is indeed until I come to the Second Epilogue, with Count Lev going round and round in circles about a Philosophy of History. He seems to be saying that any existing philosophy of history is wrong. Frankly, I couldn't care. These turgid self-indulgent pages by someone who was no doubt a good, imaginative and humane man are something I find terminally boring.

Posted By Jackson Richardson at Sat 25 Jan 2014, 3:14 PM in War and Peace || 1 Reply Is Lise Bolskonski pregnant for 18 months?! Hello, I've recently started reading War & Peace. Not finished yet, so I don't want to read through the topics in case it spoils,y reading. So apologies if it's been mentioned already :) A Google search brought me here regarding Natasha's age, which I believe is linked to the problem I noticed. Lise is pregnant when Prince Andrew leaves for war. She is described as "waddling" so I'm assuming she is already quite far along. Anyway, when the war is over, Tolstoy says Nicholas Rostov has been away for 18 months, so I'm assuming it was the same for Prince Andrew more or less, given that he was also missing. So he comes home and his wife is giving birth... 18 months after he left?! Is it a mistake in the book or something I misunderstood?

Thanks :) Posted By Camillalice at Sun 27 Oct 2013, 8:23 AM in War and Peace || 0 Replies Finally starting War and Peace films/book project Nearly two years after announcing my intent, I'm finally having a go at War and Peace. To sum up, I'm first watching three filmed versions in order of increasing length: The 1956 American/Italian version (3 1/2 hours), the classic 1966-67 four-part Russian version (7 hours), and the 20-part BBC-TV serial from 1972-73 (15 hours). I'm hoping this three-stage introduction will help me remember who is who and doing what during the actual read without constantly having to stop and look people up. First, the 1956 version, starring noted Russian actors Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, and Mel Ferrer. I joke, but looking up the main cast in IMDB, I see American, English, Dutch, Italian, Czech, Austrian, and Swedish, but no Russian.

Scanning the secondary cast listing, I finally find a Russian-sounding name: Dimitri Konstantinov, with the promising credit "Young Officer at Orgy" (though this being a 1950s major studio release, and PG-rated to boot, I probably shouldn't get my hopes up). Further down, I find one more: Savo Raskovitch as Czar Alexander I. That looks to be about it for authenticity, though. From what I've read, this version seems to be the runt of the litter, especially when compared to the revered Russian version. Since I'm going into this with no preconceptions, and minimal knowledge of the original story (I only know it involves a love triangle between two men named Pierre and Andrei and a woman named Natasha, with Napoleon's invasion as a backdrop), let's see how this movie works on its own merits. *time jump* Having watched the film in three parts over the last three days, I can say that this may be the most un-epic epic I've ever seen. Most of the cast emoted professionally enough but it was all very stage-actey and artificial (though Herbert Lom as Napoleon was a definite win).

This seemed to be a deliberate style decision, but it resulted in none of the characters feeling real, so I was never able to get really involved. There was also little sense of forward propulsion in the story, just coasting and looking at people doing their thing. I never felt any kind of build toward a climax. And the love triangle itself wasn't even much of one, since not much time was spent on the main three characters together. I can't say how much of the lack of life was due to trims to the source material, but that shouldn't be an excuse anyway; Gone with the Wind was a pretty huge novel, and that movie still beats this one in pretty much every way. Just compare the scenes in the two movies involving the heroines dealing with the wounded. My rating on this one: 6/10 Still, it did its job. Now I know the main characters and the basic story. Next up: The Russians liked this movie but thought they could do better. I hope so.

Posted By Calidore at Wed 30 Jan 2013, 9:39 PM in War and Peace || 8 Replies War and Peace: The Movie(1956) and the Novel WAR AND PEACE: Leo Tolstoy and Me stoy Part 1: The 1956 release of War and Peace was the first English-language film version of the novel War and Peace by the Russian novelist and short-story writer, essayist and playwright Leo Tolstoy(1828-1910). This 1956 film was released into cinemas when I was 12, in grade 7, and responsible for the marquee at the Roxy Theatre in Burlington Ontario. I got into all the films that came into town---free---at least while I had that part-time job in my senior years of primary school. I don’t remember ever seeing War and Peace until it was televised this afternoon.(1) War and Peace won many awards; I leave it to readers here to find out which ones.

I also leave it to readers to take-in, if their interests allow, the available summaries and analyses of both the novel and of the film, of Tolstoy’s life and of any other relevant Russian literary life and history that is of interest to them.-Ron Price with thanks to (1)ABC1 TV, 12:00-3:25 p.m., 22/12/’12. As a student and, then, teacher of English literature from the 1950s to the first years of the 21st century, I was blest with never having to either read this work or teach it as part of the curriculum. The book is one of the longest novels ever written, and one of the most famous---arguably---the most famous. I will also leave the reading of that novel to readers at some time in their lives as the internet publishing world, and the many publishing houses around the planet, pile on their reading matter for 21st century students and readers.

As we all run-the-gauntlet of the print and image glut that faces us in this new and troubled age, Tolstoy requires hard yards for the KISS generations, the keep-it-simple-silly literary language of our times. Part 2: Tolstoy began his tertiary studies at the age of 16 in law and oriental languages at Kazan University. The year was 1844, the same year that Karl Marx published his first writings, and the year that the first message: "what hath God wrought?" went across a telegraph wire. Tolstoy was described by his teachers as "both unable and unwilling to learn". I won’t give you chapter and verse of this man’s fascinating life for that, too, you can read about at your leisure, if you have the interest. I will note here, though, one fact of interest to me, if not to you, about the dissolute university student who was Tolstoy and who, by his 40s, had transformed himself into a number of roles for which he acquired in the decades ahead---fame and renown. One of these roles was as an educator whose school, whose learning system, was a direct forerunner to A.

S. Neill's Summerhill School, a man, a school, and an educational system which I will also leave to readers to google at their leisure this summer. If readers of this prose-poem of mine here at this Literature Network Forum live in the northern hemisphere, then, they can do their googling during this winter holiday. The school Tolstoy founded in his 40s can justifiably be claimed to be the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 22/12/’12. It helped having Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda in starring roles, but I’m glad I never had to either read or teach this immense, great, pastiche of a book, the 7th longest, as far as I know.…Working on it as(1) he was when Darwin’s Origin of the Species hit the public in 1859…... I’ve been working on this book for nearly 50 years; had it on my to-do list, but I’ve got lost in the world of print and image-glut.

I’ve put novels down on the back-burner in a lesser category as far back as the 1950s, a half-century-of-life or more-ago, ago. You said, Leo, that there was a man in Akka who had found the key to it all.(2) I came across this idea over 50 years ago at the same time as a friend was reading your writing...immersed as I was in history and philosophy.....To read your War & Peace was impossible for me then and now, given my long reading lists then, my proclivities now, and the fact that these evenings of my life are coming at me faster than the speed of light, as I head into the last hours of my life-night before...dawn. (1) Tolstoy himself, somewhat enigmatically, said of War and Peace that it was "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle”. He went on to elaborate that “the best Russian literature does not conform to standard norms” and, hence, he hesitated to call War and Peace a novel. The book is actually the seventh longest novel ever written in a Latin or Cyrillic-based alphabet.

It is subdivided into four books or volumes, each with sub-parts containing many chapters. See War and Peace at Wikipedia. (2) See Leo Tolstoy and the Baha’i Faith, Luigi Stendardo, translated form the French by Jeremy Fox, George Ronald, Oxford, 1985, p.53. Ron Price 22/12/’12 (final draft) Posted By Ron Price at Sat 22 Dec 2012, 9:24 PM in War and Peace || 4 Replies Did Pierre Cheat on Natasha? In the first epilogue, Pierre and Natasha discuss their former quarrels after Pierre returns from Petersburg. Pierre says he loves Natasha and even if they're at odds when they part, he develops a lot of love for her after they've been parted for a while. This makes Natasha a little queasy, and Pierre says, "No, I never stopped loving you, it's not that..." He doesn't finish the sentence. Natasha says their quarrels are silly and when Pierre mentions jealousy, she shuts him up, afraid to open a new can of worms.

After a moment of silence, she asks him, "Did you see her?" Pierre says no. Does this interaction imply that Pierre cheated on Natasha at one point in their marriage or is my reading incorrect? I've searched Wikipedia, Sparknotes, and Cliffnotes, but to no avail :( Posted By konish at Mon 13 Aug 2012, 3:39 AM in War and Peace || 1 Reply A Novice and "War and Peace" I'm about to begin War and Peace (Tolstoy of course) and having only read a dozen or so of his short stories, I got the bright idea I would consult you bright folks for tips. I've heard people keeping notebooks to track characters, things like that. Anything that might be helpful is welcome indeed. Thanks in advance. Posted By ZTay at Tue 24 Jul 2012, 3:16 AM in War and Peace || 5 Replies Russians Speaking French?

I'm reading a newer translation of War and Peace, one that claims to be truer to the original than the standard Maude translation (I don't know if it is; I don't read Russian), and one of the ways in which it does this is keep the original French text. While I'm reading, I keep wondering why the Russians speak so much French, when they're fighting the French. Even the emperor speaks French. What's the deal with that? Posted By Mutatis-Mutandis at Thu 14 Jun 2012, 8:34 PM in War and Peace || 4 Replies War and Peace War and Peace or browse other Shmoopers' Questions In A Nutshell Picture yourself as a writer in the middle of the 19th century. You’re wearing wool underwear (cause you can’t really afford the nice silk ones), sitting in your dark little room, the candlelight is flickering (still waiting on that Thomas Edison guy), and you’re holding a quill pen in your hand thinking about the blank page in front of you. Mostly, though, you’re really, really stressed out. Why?

Well, if you’re like pretty much every other writer in the 19th century, you’re totally doing it for the money – fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, people gotta eat, and all that. And as we all know from the summer blockbusters we pay to see, if you’re trying to make bank from providing entertainment to the masses, you need to stick to some tried and true formulas: go big, stay away from anything too complicated…and then rinse and repeat for as long as you can. Transformers 5? Here we come. But what if you didn’t have to worry about what your audience thought, or at least didn’t stress about whether your big work was going to pay for your kids’ schools and whatnot? Well, then you'd be Leo Tolstoy . Tolstoy was from a wealthy, aristocratic family (that's Count Tolstoy, thank you very much), so he could basically write whatever he wanted without worrying too much about how many copies he was going to sell. And so, from 1865 to 1869, he indulged his inner history buff by digging deeper and deeper into Napoleon ’s campaigns in Russia in 1812.

When he was done, he ended up with what is pretty much the most impressive-sounding book to ever brag about reading: War and Peace. And with good reason. Tolstoy’s research didn't just involve reading some history books and calling it a day. No, he dove into the archives, getting his hands on actual letters sent by Napoleon and the Russian and French generals and figuring out the personalities involved from the way they wrote about their activities. Even more impressive, he traveled to the actual battlefields, compass and surveying tools in hand, to map out for himself where the troops were stationed and how they attacked and defended. Now that’s dedication. Tolstoy combined all this research with firsthand knowledge about the ways wars were really fought (he had been an embedded journalist during the Crimean War in 1857). He became angry about the crazy inaccuracies in the historical accounts being published and decided to correct historians once and for all by laying it all out in his own book. It wasn't just the small mistakes that made him mad, either – it was the whole system of historical writing. Back then, the “great man” theory of history reigned supreme.

Basically, whenever something big happened, you were supposed to look around for the most awesome leader and give all the credit or blame to him. Tolstoy thought that was just idiotic, since leaders don’t just materialize out of thin air but are the products of their time. Events are necessarily very much the result of all the other events that lead up to them. Tolstoy’s two major points are: 1) historians should think not just about the big names like Napoleon, but also about the forces that shaped them and the events that allowed them to take power; and 2) even the most seemingly insignificant people can affect history, by following or not following orders, for example, or delivering or not delivering a message. And that's actually how modern historians conceive of history, so Tolstoy was ahead of his time. OK, now before we go finish, everyone gather round as Shmoop spills a secret. Have you noticed how we’ve been going out of our way not to call War and Peace a novel? You haven’t? Well, trust us, it’s been happening.

That’s because Tolstoy packed the thing so full of stuff (like, say, military history, complete with detailed maps) that it really isn’t a novel. Even Tolstoy said so a few years after it got published. Instead, it’s a work that's crammed with every possible kind of writing that you can use to tell a story, and even the parts that do recognizably belong to one genre or another are twisted and transformed to the point where it’s hard to identify them. Want to know more? Check out the “Genre” section. Why Should I Care? Is there anything that will impress the ladies or gents more than a claim that you have actually read – and understood – the great masterwork of Western literature? Imagine cruising the night scene with some prepared segues: "Oh, really? That's very interesting. It's just like Tolstoy writes in War and Peace. ...What's that? Yes, I just finished it." Will this make you the life of the party? Probably not. Will it up your snob appeal and show off your cultured smarts? You betcha.

But, we hear you asking, would anything besides a selfish quest for intellectual glory propel me to open up this forbidding tome? Shmoop is here to tell you – oh yeah, baby. In fact, War and Peace might well be the only book you ever need to read. It's about everything. Seriously, pick a theme, any theme. Pick any philosophical question or thorny policy problem. Pick any relationship problem, in any kind of relationship, from friendship to family to love to hate. They're all in there. This is basically a guide to life as we know it. Not only that, this is the novel that looks at all that stuff in a totally modern way. Forget all that fussy 19th century finger-wagging. Forget pat answers and endings. Tolstoy throws all that away and decides to treat his readers like grownups who are able to make up their own minds about the characters and situations he's describing. What you get here is the real deal: pain, pleasure, suffering, happiness, sex, love, childhood, parenthood, work life, religious faith.... Not to mention the meaning of life.

Leo Tolstoy - Christian Classics Ethereal Library - Christian Classics Ethereal Library Anna Karenina Anna's world is turned upside down when her life takes a precarious turn. Although she is married with a son, Anna unexpectedly finds herself falling in love with Count Vrosky. Anna is determined to follow her passions, and her elicit love affair with Vrosky threatens to jeopardize her comfortable existence. Anna Karenina unravels into tragedy as the story's characters are confronted with dilemmas of faith, love, happiness, and betrayal. Tolstoy's profound depiction of human emotion and self-discovery provokes readers to question the meaning of life. Often construed as Tolstoy's greatest novel, Anna Karenina beautifully illustrates the political and social atmosphere of Russia during the 19th century. Anna Karenina is a deeply moving narrative which wrestles with the contradictions that beleaguer human happiness. Confession In this short book, the newly-converted Tolstoy shares some of the struggles he faced during a mid-life crisis of faith. He begins by reflecting upon how neither philosophy nor religion seemed to answer any of life’s great questions.

As he explains, the author only overcomes his doubts after observing and immersing himself in the faith of ordinary people performing everyday tasks. The Christian life lived out, more than anything else, revealed the truths of God to him. Tolstoy’s personal account not only provides insight into the mind of one of the world’s greatest novelists, but it also serves to shed light on the human experience of doubt, despair, and faith. Tolstoy’s Confession can be read especially well alongside his novella of similar themes, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Death of Ivan Ilych Tolstoy's novella, written just after the author's conversion to Christianity, is now considered a literary masterpiece. In it, death suddenly confronts Ivan, a well-to-do middle-aged Russian man, in the form of an acute illness. Standing on the edge of death's yawning chasm, Ivan looks back at his life and its comparative vacuity. Before he fell ill, earning enough money for some elegant furniture concerned him, but now eternity and destiny wrack his spirit.

Tolstoy's startlingly precise portrayal of human anxiety, desire, epiphany, and love has gripped countless readers from all walks of life, and many of them report that the story not only moved them to tears, but also had a profound impact upon how they view life and its purpose. This beloved book is essential to any library. Family Happiness The title of Tolstoy’s novella is a clever joke, as it contains the story of a couple’s descent into unhappiness. The 17-year-old Mashechka falls in love with Sergey Mikhaylych, a man more than twice her age. After an awkward courtship, the two marry. As Mashechka matures, however, she begins to understand more of love’s complexities; she realizes that her love for Sergey was a mere child’s infatuation. Disillusioned, Mashechka grows to loathe both herself and married life. Tolstoy’s tale exhibits the vivid narration and perceptive observations of human existence that characterize all of the author’s works. Written before his conversion, Family Happiness provides an interesting contrast to Tolstoy’s later religious short stories and novels.

Father Sergius The young, proud Stepan Kasatsky has a seemingly bright future ahead of him: he has risen to a high rank in the Russian army, and he will soon marry the beautiful Countess Mary Korotkova. When Stepan discovers his fiancée’s infidelity—with Czar Nicholas I, no less—he experiences such heartbreak and humiliation that he flees, later dedicating himself to the Russian Orthodox Church. He takes the name “Father Sergius.” Although he becomes a celebrated churchman, he continues to struggle with pride and lust. Written during Tolstoy’s later, post-conversion years, Father Sergius shares the characteristic messages of humility, abstinence, self-denial, and total faith in God. In 1917, Yakov Protazanov, one of the founding fathers of Russian cinema, directed a film inspired by the novella. Gospel In Brief This story of the life of Christ differs widely from Tolstoy’s other work. He provides us with an experimental narrative that blends the stories of the four Gospels into one.

In this blend, Tolstoy discards what he finds incongruous to the modern person’s everyday experience and understanding, such as Jesus’ genealogy or miracles. With his stunning directness and literary expertise, Tolstoy makes Christ seem present and real in spite of the fact that his picture of Christ may not necessarily align that of other theologians. Hadji Murad This short novel, published after Tolstoy's death, is the last novel the great author wrote. The novel tells the true story of Hadji Murad (or Hadji Murat, alternatively), an Avar who commanded the peoples of Dagestan and Chechnya in their resistance against assimilation into Russian Empire. Tolstoy had first heard of Murad during his travels, and the author became inspired by his refusal to give in to the demands of a corrupt world. Hadji Murad shares many of the same themes found in War and Peace. Those enchanted by Tolstoy's work may find yet another treasure in this lesser-known historical novel. Kreutzer Sonata Although now considered one of Tolstoy’s best shorter stories, Russian authorities censored The Kreutzer Sonata after its publication in 1889.

Similarly, other countries including the United States had banned the book’s translations. The story concerns Pozdnyshev, a cynical young man overcome by passion, rage, and jealousy. The author plumbs the innermost depths of Pozdnyshev’s crumbling mind; the callousness of that mind and its intentions can be profoundly unsettling. Tolstoy explains in the story’s epilogue, however, that the downfall of the twisted Pozdnyshev serves only to show how carnal lust destroys lives. While all readers acknowledge the story’s genius, its intended message of ascetic abstinence remains controversial. G.K. Chesterton, for example, wrote that “Tolstoy is not content with pitying humanity for its pains: such as poverty and prisons. He also pities humanity for its pleasures, such as music and patriotism. He weeps at the thought of hatred; but in The Kreutzer Sonata he weeps almost as much at the thought of love.” Master and Man The avaricious Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov is impatient to set out on a business venture. Defying common sense, he drags his servant, Nikita, along with him into the bitter cold of a Russian blizzard.

Brekhunov and Nikita lose themselves in the forest; in a matter of minutes, the master shifts from discomfort to panic and from irritation to desperation. Both his life and that of his servant are in his hands. Master and Man shares the startlingly precise insight into human nature that characterizes all of Tolstoy’s work. Passionate and rich in imagery, the short story has enchanted readers with its message of selfless love. Twenty-Three Tales Famous for his longer novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy displays his mastery of the short story in Twenty-Three Tales. This volume is organized by topic into seven different segments. Part I is filled with stories for children, while Part 2 is filled with popular stories for adult. In Part 3, Tolstoy discreetly condemns capitalism in his fairy tale "Ivan the Fool." Part 4 contains several short stories, which were originally published with illustrations to encourage the inexpensive reproduction of pictorial works. Part 5 features a number of Russian folk tales, which address the themes of greed, societal conflict, prayer, and virtue. Part 6 contains two French short stories, which Tolstoy translated and modified.

Finally, Part 7 contains a group of parabolic short stories that Tolstoy dedicated to the Jews of Russia, who were persecuted in the early 1900's. Entertaining for all ages, Tolstoy's creative short stories are overflowing with deeper, often spiritual, meaning. Towards a Literature of Peace - Diplomatic Courier Diplomatic Courier June 27, 2016 Written by Niall Munro Would Tolstoy’s epic 1869 novel have been such a success if it had just been called Peace? There is no doubt that a literature of war is very well established: from the Iliad to the present day, the genre has been influential in shaping our responses to conflict, and some would argue that it has even created the conditions for war. Even if Abraham Lincoln’s famous remark to Harriet Beecher Stowe about her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (‘So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!’) was never actually spoken by the president in 1862, the literature of war has had far-reaching consequences. Not so the literature of peace. What would a literature of peace even look like?

Yet as the Global Peace Index demonstrates, war is only one part of the story. In its section on Positive Peace, the GPI notes that ‘[u]nderstanding what creates sustainable peace cannot just be found in the study of violence.’ The same might be said of literature. As an academic working on literary representations of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, I am naturally interested in what the literature produced during and after a period of war can tell us about what it is like to experience conflict and remember it in peacetime. Robert Penn Warren once called the Civil War ‘our only “felt” history’ – history lived in the national imagination’, which indicates how deeply the memory of war can penetrate into consciousness, because the effects of war and peace are felt not just on the body, but in the mind as well. In literature, the experience of war is translated into words which bear witness to pain and the most extreme human difficulty. There have been many examples of this kind of writing, but as Carolyn Forché has shown , it is frequently poets who take on this role of witness. According to Forché, poetry has an acute responsibility because ‘the poem might be our only evidence that an event has occurred: it exists for us as the sole trace of an occurrence.

Poem as trace, poem as evidence.’ In this way, poetry (and literature more broadly), can help to achieve some measure of postwar reconciliation, since it provides a non-violent mode for feelings of resistance or expressions of trauma related to conflict. It also has the power to bring about societal cohesion as it draws upon established and respected cultural forms to give voice to impulses of peacebuilding, as demonstrated in Somalia , one of the least peaceful countries in the world according to the GPI. When we think about Positive Peace as representing ‘the attitudes and structures which create and sustain peaceful societies’, I think it is essential that we consider the cultural dimensions of those attitudes and structures. How could a future Peace Index measure how far a country fosters a cultural imaginary to promote reconciliation and peace? Could it look, for example, at the extent of literary censorship in the country, or investigate how far cultural figures were appointed to bodies such as truth and reconciliation commissions? If in recent years we have entered a Peace ‘Moment’, then now is the perfect time to emphasize the necessity of literature and culture in sustaining that moment and interrogating the rhetoric surrounding it – aspirations that literature and literary criticism can achieve.

For if it is to exist and have efficacy, one of the aims of a literature of peace should be, as the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe put it , ‘to make humanity uncomfortable’. A literature of peace must challenge. However recent the conflict, it must insist on its role in the safeguarding of memory and commemoration and it must highlight the need for citizens to acknowledge personal responsibility for their actions. Drawing on Jean-Paul Sartre’s writings promoting ‘counter-violence’ after World War II, Antony Adolf has argued that ‘peace literature and especially its criticism become counter-counter-violence; that is, they are wholly nonviolent when considered through the paradigmatic prisms of individual, social, and collective peace.’ Literature of this type is not passive. Its dynamic quality comes from the presentation of injustice and the expectation that a reader will respond by assessing his or her own role in perpetrating violence – and then acting to counter such aggression. A recent work of poetry like Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric exemplifies that kind of relationship between reader and writer.

Documenting the casual, everyday acts of racism experienced in America, the book particularly derives its power from two aspects of the work: firstly, the calm yet forceful way it presents these experiences – it shows, it does not tell. And then the second-person address of the book: ‘you’ are part of this narrative of discrimination and micro-aggressions whether you have experienced them yourself or not. It is a profoundly disturbing book, but just as it disturbs, so it simultaneously inspires in a reader a sense of resilience, a key component of Positive Peace. Reading this book and others like it makes us want to be resilient to the kind of violence it describes, and to commit ourselves to its prevention. As authors and critics seek to fashion a genre of the literature of peace, we need more writing like this, and we need it urgently. About the author: Dr. Niall Munro is Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Director of the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He is the author of Hart Crane’s Queer Modernist Aesthetic and is currently writing a book entitled ‘Our only “felt” history’: American Modernism and the Civil War, 1891-1944.

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Question: Who wrote the 1869 novel ‘War and Peace’?
Answer: Leo Tolstoy