War and peace is a vast epic centered on Napoleon’s war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoy’s view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred characters.
Three of these, the artless and delightful Natasha Rostove, the World-Weary Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoy’s philosophy in this novel of unquestioned mastery.
This translation in the one which received Tolstoy’s approval.