War and Peace is as much an historical treatise as it is a novel and the story of the Napoleonic war in Russia. The novel chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. Portions of an earlier version, titled ‘The Year 1805’, were serialized in ‘The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 1867’, then published in its entirety in 1869. Tolstoy said ‘War and Peace’ is “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.” Large sections, especially the later chapters, are philosophical discuss…
(Pengiunbook’s)