War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace opens at a soiree in Saint Petersburg in July 1805, given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer, and introduces many of its main characters as they arrive. One of the arrivals is Pierre Bezukhov, a wealthy count's illegitimate son whose father is dying after several strokes, and Pierre is about to be drawn into contesting the inheritance. Pierre has grown up abroad, educated at his father's cost since his mother died, and he is known to be the old count's favourite among his illegitimate children, which is why the company at the party treats him with such attention even though he is socially awkward. The novel uses five interlocking narratives of Russian aristocratic families, following them through the years of the Napoleonic Wars from the drawing rooms and balls of Saint Petersburg and Moscow to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino and the French invasion of 1812.

The book alternates the story of the families with passages of argument, in which Tolstoy sets out his views on history and philosophy, including the question of how much credit any individual, Napoleon included, deserves for the events that happen. The private lives and the war move through one another across the book, so that marriages, debts and duels take place alongside retreats and the long withdrawal from Moscow.

An early version appeared in serial form from 1865, and the whole book was rewritten before its publication in 1869.