To be fair, War and Peace is such a weighty book even in the original Russian that in many English speaking parts of the world, “war and peace” is slang for something that you’ll never get to the end of it.
And that slang originated in the days when people READ books. These days, for the iPhone generation, anything longer than a tweet is TL;DR.
It’s a great book, but I wouldn’t put it on the curriculum either.
I read it last year and enjoyed it! I liked it so well I then read Doctor Zhivago, twice!
One of my favorites.
I have read the whole thing...three times.
“I wouldn’t put it on the curriculum either”
I would bet money that it never was on the curriculum, except for maybe in some university classes. It’s just a way to thumb their nose at Russia.
I agree, it is an okay read, some parts are pretty good. I like the part where the prince gets wounded in battle, he is fighting and suddenly he is on the ground looking up at how nice the clouds look and wondering what all of the racket is going on around him.
in many English speaking parts of the world, “war and peace” is slang for something that you’ll never get to the end of it.
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I read the original version of Les Misérables, two thick volumes of more than anyone would ever want to know about the French Revolution.
I read it (in a modern English translation) when I was 12.
Its not THAT hard. The worst part of it are the philosophical-sociological-”spiritual” digressions. In that its akin to, say, “Atlas Shrugged”. Otherwise its a very good soap opera (” Will Natasha find love? “), with compelling characters and a fascinating setting.
One problem with it is that business of Tolstoys philosophy. His effective deification of the Russian peasantry is going to grate on people unsympathetic to Russians. A corrective to that, if you want one, is Maxim Gorky. His peasants are animals.