I was in Oxford on Friday to interview Rosamund Bartlett about her recent Tolstoy biography, which coincides with the great man’s death a century ago on 20 November 1910. The interview will appear shortly on the Blackwell Online website, but in the meantime, here is Rosamund reading a short extract from the book itself, in which Tolstoy as a boy listens to his grandmother’s blind storyteller recount a bedtime story… Click here for the reading.
Published to coincide with the centenary of Tolstoy’s death, this is a major new edition of one of the great works of world literature. Tolstoy’s masterpiece captures with unprecedented immediacy the broad sweep of life during the Napoleonic wars and the brutal invasion of Russia. Balls and soirees, the burning of Moscow, the intrigues of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles, the quiet moments of everyday life – all in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed. The Maudes’ translation of War and Peace has long been considered the best English version, and now for the first time it has been revised to bring it fully into line with modern approaches to the text. French passages are restored, Anglicization of Russian names removed, and outmoded expressions updated. This audio guide to War and Peace is presented by Amy Mandelker, who is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author of numerous books and articles on Russian literature and literary theory. …
