War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
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War and Peace

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Narrator: Kenny Davis

Unabridged: 54 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Loudly

Published: 08/24/2023


Synopsis

"War and Peace" is a monumental novel written by Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published between 1865 and 1869. The book is set in the period of the Napoleonic Wars and offers a panoramic view of Russian society at that time. It follows the lives of five aristocratic families through the historical events of the early 19th century, including Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The novel explores themes of fate, free will, history, and the complexities of family and human relationships.

Author Bio

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana in central Russia and educated privately. He studied Oriental languages and law at the University of Kazan, then led a life of dissipation until 1851, when he went to the Caucasus and joined an artillery regiment. He took part in the Crimean War, and on the basis of this experience wrote The Sevastopol Stories, which confirmed his tenuous reputation as a writer.

After a period in St. Petersburg and abroad, where he studied educational methods for use in his school for peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy married Sofya Behrs in 1862. The next fifteen years was a period of great happiness: the couple had thirteen children, and Tolstoy managed his estates, continued his educational projects, and wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

A Confession marked a spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life; he became an extreme moralist, and in a series of pamphlets written after 1880, he expressed his rejection of state and church, indictment of the weaknesses of the flesh, and denunciation of private property. He published his last novel, Resurrection, in 1900.

Tolstoy's teaching earned him many followers at home and abroad, but also much opposition, and in 1901 he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. He died in 1910.

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