Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) wrote "War and Peace" over a span of six years. More than half a century separated the events described in the novel from those experienced by Russia at the time "War and Peace" was published: Tolstoy recounts the details of the wars of 1807 and 1812 - between the Russians and Napoleon's armies - alongside the carefree atmosphere prevailing in the salons of the Russian aristocracy.
As Vladimir Nabokov notes in "Lectures on Russian Literature," "War and Peace" was written at a time when Tolstoy had found temporary peace in family life, when "his restless soul, torn between its sensual temperament and its hypersensitive conscience," rested for a while.
Before the turmoil (familial, economic, and moral) began anew, he managed to complete "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," and afterward, despite being elderly, he decided to wander: his thirst for wandering never left him; what left him was his physical strength.
In 1910, while heading to a remote monastery, he died in the waiting room of a train station. A romantic end for a count with vast riches by the Volga, fully aware of his class origins, with an unending propensity towards the greatest possible entropy.
As for "War and Peace," a magnificent "historical" novel, it represents the product of his creative contradiction: it is the rigorously structured work of a personality in complete disorder, in confusion, in search of the Good (Tolstoy felt disgust towards the egotism and greed of the ruling class), but also in moral panic (characteristic of his time, which was tormented by the dilemmas of "Bonapartist" individualism and Christian self-denial).
[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]
