War and Peace

Seeker
May 24, 2022
1 min read

Updated: May 28, 2022

The infamous novel feared for its length and density, many consider War and Peace not just a classic among Russian novels. This is interesting, considering Tolstoy never considered it a novel. He insisted that instead, it is “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.” In a broad sense, War and Peace tells the story of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and the influence it had on Tsarist culture. War and Peace is not specifically about that conflict though. Instead, it focuses on the many characters that are affected by the war and the questions that ask in response to it. War and Peace is unlike any form of writing read before or since publication. It is the amalgamation of Tolstoy’s imagination that interrogates culture, history, psychology, philosophy, and the human response to war.