War and Peace

这并非一部让人轻松翻阅的通俗史诗。多位读者用整整一年、四个月甚至几度放弃才读完这1358页，它像一块需要啃食的砖头，却也让人从此爱上「砖头书」。真正打动人的，是托尔斯泰对人物内心近乎残酷的精准：他写爱情，写到神经层面的激发与占有幻想；写人脸的肌肉如何泄露无法伪装的真实感受；写父子、夫妻、兄妹在重大人生节点上的微妙张力。而全书最具争议处，莫过于作者反复插入的哲学思辨——他借「苹果落地」「时针与钟声」的比喻，把拿破仑、亚历山大降格为「给事件命名的标签」，质疑所谓大人物对历史的支配。正是这种将小说与史观、心理与思辨绞合在一起的野心，让它在同类名著中独树一帜：适合愿意被作者「教训」、并享受被颠覆认知的读者。

Count Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, in Yasnaya Polyana, Russia. Orphaned at nine, he was brought up by an elderly aunt and educated by French tutors until he matriculated at Kazan University in 1844. In 1847, he gave up his studies and, after several aimless years, volunteered for military duty, serving as a junior officer in the Crimean War before retiring in 1857. In 1862, Tolstoy married Sophie Behrs, a marriage that was to become, for him, bitterly unhappy. His diary, started in 1847, was used for self-study and self-criticism; it served as the source from which he drew much of the material that appeared not only in his great novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), but also in his shorter works. Seeking religious justification for his life, Tolstoy evolved a new Christianity based upon his own interpretation of the Gospels. Yasnaya Polyana became a mecca for his many converts. At the age of eighty-two, the writer’s health failed him in Astapovo, Russia, where he died on November 20, 1910. Antony Briggs has translated widely from the Russian, especially Pushkin, and is the author of several critical books on Russian literature. Orlando Figes is the author of A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 and, most recently, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia.