From sophisticated Moscow soirees to breathless troika rides through the snow, from the bloody front line at Austerlitz to a wife's death in childbirth, the author conjures a broad panorama of rich, messy, beautiful and debased human life.

Pierre searches for purpose, Andrei for glory and Natasha for love, while Russia moves towards war.

Tolstoy's enthralling epic depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict.

Moving between St Petersburg, Moscow, country estates and battlefields, War and Peace follows families linked by love, ambition, inheritance and history. At its heart are Pierre Bezukhov, thoughtful and impulsive; Prince Andrei, restless and ambitious; and Natasha Rostov, whose vitality changes the lives around her.

This is a classic Russian epic about war, love, family and the search for meaning. Vast in scope yet intimate in feeling, Tolstoy brings public history and private emotion together, showing how individuals are shaped by forces they can neither control nor fully understand.

War and Peace is essential reading for anyone drawn to historical fiction, literary classics and novels that ask what it means to live morally in a world of upheaval.

VINTAGE CLASSICS RUSSIAN SERIES: sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.

'If you've never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don't read War and Peace, you live it' The Times

'It is simply the greatest novel ever written. All human life is in it. If I were told there was time to read only a single book, this would be it' Andrew Marr