Special Feature: WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy

WAR AND PEACE is one of those novels that people always claim to have read but have never actually picked up the book because…..1400+ pages is A LOT of reading.

I am not one of those people…..I freely admit I have NEVER read this book. I haven’t even attempted! At first the length scared me but after reading other lengthy books of this same caliber, I have since considered tackling this mammoth book!

So I will be running a review of this one in June but in the mean time I wanted to call everyone’s attention to this beautiful edition from Penguin Classics!

Full confession…..I decided to commit to review based solely on this edition and cover. It’s beautiful! I love the cloth bound copy and design. The edition itself is designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith (I reviewed one of her children’s books last year and I proudly display it in my nursery!). I am a cover snob and fully admit it. I love this edition/cover so much that I was willing to shelve other books in order to read this one.

Plus I saw the WAR AND PEACE television mini series earlier this year and based on how interesting that was, I thought maybe it was time to dive into this book once and for all so I can proudly state that I read it!

At a glittering society party in St. Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon’s army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey, and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants, to soldiers and Napoleon himself.

In WAR AND PEACE, Leo Tolstoy entwines grand themes—conflict and love, birth and death, free will and fate—with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur.

Helmed as one of the undisputed masterpieces of world literature, and one of the longest novels ever written, WAR AND PEACE is as much a philosophical discussion as it is a work of fiction.