War And Peace

Leo Tolstoy

May 2006 · BBC Digital Audio · Narrated by Simon Russell Beale, Leo McKern, Nicola Pagett and Full Cast

About this audiobook

A thirty-five strong cast including Leo McKern as Kutuzov, Simon Russell Beale as Pierre Bezuhov, Emily Mortimer as Natasha Rostov and Gerard Murphy as Andrei Bolkonsky, brings all the passion and turbulence of Tolstoy’s epic masterpiece to the airwaves in this unique BBC Radio 4 dramatisation. 'Nine hours of blood-and-thunder period drama on a single disc has to be the best bargain around' - Guardian ‘Excellent special effects and a haunting theme tune make it compulsive listening.’ - Independent

Ratings and reviews

Mislabeled. This is not an audio version of the Tolstoy novel. This is a dramatised play for audio or radio broadcast. An audiobook should stick firmly to the text of the novel. This is a summarised version of the story which excludes most of Tolstoy's evocative writing and thought. Ok if you want a quick summary of the novel but in no way a substitute for reading the real thing.

2 good top quality

About the author

Leo Tolstoy (1828 –1910) was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays.