War and Peace IV

Moscow is lost, occupied by Napoleon' s French hordes. Is Russia lost? Is all lost? Students of history will already know the answer. But whether or not you do, Leo Tolstoy' s ' War and Peace IV' is an extraordinary and epic telling of what happened next. Through the eyes of the Russian soldier-aristocrat Pierre, we see mercy and inhumanity behind the lines. He even embarks on a plot to assassinate Napoleon. Spoiler he failed. On the home front, the strands are tied together with death, marriage and hope. But will there be a happy ending after 15 years and 1,000 pages? Leo Tolstoy' s masterpiece is a complete semester of Russian and French history, using the zoom button to focus on its impact on families from the aristocracy to the peasants.It paints a picture of petty jealousy, pride and forbidden love in the Russian stately homes. If you like costume dramas and the novels of Jane Austen (' Pride and Prejudice', ' Sense and Sensibility' ), this is the granddaddy of them all. The same goes for fans of Bernard Cornwell' s ' Sharpe' novels and TV series', starring Sean Bean. ' War and Peace' was made into a BBC TV series in 2016, written by Andrew Davies and starring Lily James and James Norton.