Not only is this immense work a novel, it is a place for Tolstoy to expound his views on the causes and persons of the Napoleonic wars, on the methods of historical research, on free will and (of course) the existence of God. In "The Brothers Karamazov", Dostoyevsky writes: "Show a Russian schoolboy a map of the stars, which he knows nothing about, and he will give you back the map next day with corrections on it." Tolstoy is the ideal to which all such schoolboys aspire, and "War and Peace" is his greatest achievement. However, if you find his voice as irritating as some of the other reviewers, you should probably go for another version. I happen to belong to the second class, and I believe he is especially suited for this novel. The narrator (whose real name was David Case - he passed away in 2005) seems to provoke extreme reactions: some people can't stand him, others can't get enough of him. The actual length of the book is about 61 hours, since the last four hours (the epilogues) are repeated twice. First, a few technical notes: - The translation used in the audiobook is the one by Constance Garnett.
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