War And Peace: Penguin Classics

Leo Tolstoy

Apr 2020 · Penguin Classics · Narrated by Sam Woolf, Michael Fox, Olivia Darnley, Terence Wilton, and Chloe Pirrie

About this audiobook

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Chloe Pirrie, Sam Woolf, Michael Fox, Olivia Darnley and Terence Wilton.

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 (1868-9), 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.

Translator Copyright © Anthony Briggs 2005 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Ratings and reviews

Awesome and epic. I'm so grateful to have been able to experience this classic novel in audiobook format. Just finishing the discussion section, placed after the main book.

great performance by the narrators and a great story!

About the author

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Tula province. He studied at the University of Kazan, then led a life of pleasure until 1851 when he joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus. He established his reputation as a writer with The Sebastopol Sketches (1855-6). After a period in St Petersburg and abroad, he married, had thirteen children, managed his vast estates in the Volga Steppes and wrote War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). A Confession (1879-82) marked a spiritual crisis in his life, and in 1901 he was excommuincated by the Russian Holy Synod. He died in 1910, in the course of a dramatic flight from home, at the railway station of Astapovo.