Spanning the Napoleonic invasions of Russia, the novel follows several aristocratic families whose loves, ambitions, and spiritual searches unfold against the vast, impersonal tides of war and history.
Books mentioned in War and Peace (2)
Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Stephanie Felicite de Genlis: “Prince Andrew saw by the cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.”
The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: ““Rousseau’s Contrat Social,” said the vicomte with a tolerant smile. “I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas.””
Books that mention War and Peace (29)
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl: “I’d snuck into the murky stacks of the library to eat my lunch and read War and Peace (Tolstoy, 1865–69)”
The Secret City by Hugh Walpole: “He had never read a word of any Russian author. "Never _Anna_? Never _War and Peace_?”
Our Mr. Wrenn by Sinclair Lewis: “read the books she would approve—a Paris Baedeker and the second volume of Tolstoi's _War and Peace_”
The Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis: “and _Walden_, and _War and Peace_, and _Madame Bovary_”
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: “Oh, yes. Prince Boris! War and Peace. I'm named like him.”
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami: “No War and Peace, no Kenzaburo Oe, no Catcher in the Rye.”
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño: “or The Magic Mountain ... or for that matter, Les Misérables or War and Peace.”
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell: “CAMPBELL: That is a problem Tolstoy dealt with in War and Peace.”
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger: “playing Pierre or Andrey in a Technicolor production of War and Peace, with stunning battlefield scenes”
Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens: “He took a bag of books with him to Iraq, which included Thomas Paine's The Crisis, War and Peace, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged...”
How to Be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis: “We had once spent a whole week lying side by side on a beach, both reading War and Peace.”
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: “I remember how many times I tried to read War and Peace until I got the Constance Garnett translation.”
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: “You could go around implying you'd read all kinds of things, nodding knowingly when someone mentioned, say, War and Peace”
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante: “But meanwhile I saw that under War and Peace, and bearing the label of Maestro Ferraro's library, a tattered volume was sticking out.”
The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov: “If you really want to know, I've read War and Peace.”
A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov: “It reminds me of a passage in War and Peace in which Petya Rostov experiences the same phenomenon when half asleep.”
Morphine by Mikhail Bulgakov: “"I seem to recall in War and Peace there's a description of how Petya Rostov, when half asleep, experienced the same state... Leo Tolstoy's a remarkable writer!" — the narrator's own genuine reflection.”
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari: “just like other great works of fiction, such as Don Quixote, War and Peace and Harry Potter”
Italo Calvino by Martin McLaughlin: “The appearance, in the penultimate chapter, of a character such as Prince Andrej Bolkonsky, from Tolstoy's War and Peace (another favourite text of Calvino)”
Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk: epigraph: —LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
On Literature by Umberto Eco: “discussed as an example of reading suspense despite knowing the outcome”
Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan: Epigraph attributed as: —LEO TOLSTOY, WAR AND PEACE.
The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk: “At the end of War and Peace, Tolstoy added an essay discussing the role of the individual in history”
Words Are My Matter by Ursula K. Le Guin: “...such as Little Dorrit, War and Peace, To the Lighthouse, or The Lord of the Rings...”
A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk: “‘Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813,’ writes Tolstoy … at the end of War and Peace”
Artful by Ali Smith: “Graham Greene, on reading War and Peace: 'What's the use of ever writing again'”
Coventry by Rachel Cusk: “a woman – even a woman with her own room – could never have written Moby-Dick or War and Peace”
Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner: “'Parting in stations, promising to write War and Peace, this time with feeling'”