War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy said War and Peace is "not only a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time
Translate by Louise and Aylmer Maude
Tolstoy began writing War and Peace in 1863, the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. In September of that year, he wrote to Elizabeth Bers, his sister-in-law, asking if she could find any chronicles, diaries, or records that related to the Napoleonic period in Russia. He was dismayed to find that few written records covered the domestic aspects of Russian life at that time, and tried to rectify these omissions in his early drafts of the novel The first half of the book was written and named "1805".
During the writing of the second half, he read widely and acknowledged Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations. Tolstoy wrote in a letter to Afanasy Fet that what he has written in War and Peace is also said by Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation. However, Tolstoy approaches "it from the other side.
Tolstoy also said that the best Russian literature does not conform to standards and hence hesitated to call War and Peace a novel. Instead, he regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel.
Download War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
ZIP file contains PDF ebook 4.4 MB