Audiobook · read by volunteers
War and Peace, Book 04: 1806
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
Read by Roger Melin, Nathalie J., eva, Leon Mire · 16 chapters · 3 h 02
About the book
This is the fourth book of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in the English translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude, and it follows events in the year 1806. The great canvas of Russian society during the Napoleonic era is still wide open: the Rostovs, the Bolkonskys, young officers, ambitious courtiers, and families trying to hold together while the world around them is unsettled. In these sixteen chapters Tolstoy moves from drawing rooms to country estates and army life, and you hear the voices of people who hope, scheme, misjudge one another and are changed by what they see. The tone shifts between comedy, tenderness and sharp social observation. Several readers share the work, so the large cast of characters is easy to tell apart. It can be heard on its own, but it also fits naturally into the long journey through the whole novel. Voices change, but the story flows on.
Introduction
War and Peace is the epic novel by Leo Tolstoy, who lived from 1828 to 1910. It began to appear in the Russian journal Russki Vestnik in 1865, the complete work was published in 1869, and it tells the story of Russian society in the Napoleonic age. It is usually counted among Tolstoy’s two great masterpieces, together with Anna Karenina. Its scale is unusual: hundreds of characters, family histories, battles and conversations, held together by a view of history in which ordinary lives matter as much as the decisions of generals and emperors.
LibriVox has recorded the novel in separate books, and this is Book 04, covering 1806. The English text is the translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude, in the edition of 1922. The Maudes knew Tolstoy personally, and their version became a standard one for English readers for much of the twentieth century.
Book 04 consists of 16 chapters and lasts about three hours. Four LibriVox volunteers share the reading: Roger Melin, Nathalie J. and eva are among them. It is a manageable length for a first taste of the novel, and it is also a useful stopping place for listeners who are working through the whole story book by book. One does not need to know Russian history to follow it, because Tolstoy builds each scene so that the characters, their feelings and their small decisions are clear on their own.
Today, War and Peace is still read for its psychological depth. Hearing it aloud, in short pieces, makes its great architecture easier to approach. Because the novel is so long, many listeners find it helpful to take it in these separate books. Each one has its own episodes and its own shape, and the change of readers from chapter to chapter keeps the ear fresh while the characters you have already met reappear.
Public domain
Leo Tolstoy died in 1910: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text