War and Peace (Full Version) audiobook cover - Sweeping from glittering Petersburg salons to the thunder of Napoleon’s battlefields, Tolstoy follows a web of families whose loves, ambitions, and doubts are tested as history tightens around them—and asks what truly moves a human life.

War and Peace (Full Version)

Sweeping from glittering Petersburg salons to the thunder of Napoleon’s battlefields, Tolstoy follows a web of families whose loves, ambitions, and doubts are tested as history tightens around them—and asks what truly moves a human life.

Leo Tolstoy

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Chapter Overview

Description

Set against the upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars, War and Peace intertwines the fates of the Bolkonskys, Rostovs, and Bezukhovs as private longings collide with public catastrophe. From the refined maneuvering of aristocratic drawing rooms to the confusion, courage, and terror of battle, Tolstoy renders a whole society in motion, alive with comedy, tenderness, and moral urgency.

At once intimate novel and vast historical canvas, the book probes the nature of power, the illusions of glory, and the search for meaning amid chance and suffering. Its portraits of love and marriage, family loyalty, spiritual crisis, and personal transformation remain unmatched for psychological depth. A cornerstone of world literature, Tolstoy’s masterpiece endures for its humane wisdom and its daring attempt to show history not as legend, but as lived experience.

Who Should Listen

  • Listeners who want an immersive classic that blends romance, philosophy, and large-scale historical drama.
  • Fans of character-driven epics exploring love, ambition, faith, and the moral cost of war.
  • Readers interested in Napoleon-era Europe and the social world of the Russian aristocracy.

About the Authors

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was a Russian novelist, moral thinker, and one of literature’s greatest realists. After serving in the army and writing acclaimed early works, he produced his monumental novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), renowned for their psychological insight and social breadth. In later life he underwent a profound spiritual crisis, developing influential views on ethics, nonviolence, and religious reform that shaped his essays and fiction. His work has had lasting impact on world literature and modern moral philosophy.