"War and Peace" is a famous novel written by Leo Tolstoy, published between 1865 and 1869 in *Russkii Vestnik*, a periodical of the time. It is one of the longest works in the history of world literature.

The book tells the story of Russia during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, focusing particularly on the Napoleonic Wars in Russia.

Its rich detail, realism, and numerous psychological descriptions make it one of the greatest books in the history of literature.

In the novel, Tolstoy develops a fatalistic theory of history, where free will holds little importance and all events are subject to an inescapable historical determinism.

"War and Peace" created a new genre of fiction. Though now considered a novel, it broke so many conventions of the novels of its time that many critics did not initially classify it as such.

Tolstoy himself considered *Anna Karenina* (1878) his first attempt at a novel in the accepted European sense.

"War and Peace" was a huge success at the time of its publication, a level of popularity that even Tolstoy did not anticipate.