Literature Network » Leo Tolstoy

Travel Etc: Grand tours: Moscow lay in ruins, but the bells rang out Great writers and their adventures in literature. This week: Leo Tolstoy

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From: The Independent - London
Date: 20020609
Author:Sarah Rickaby

Leo Tolstoy, the son of a nobleman landowner, was born in 1828 at the family's estate south of Moscow. He studied law and oriental languages at Kazan University, but left without finishing his degree. `War and Peace', from which this extract is taken, is an epic of Russian society in the Napoleonic period and was written between 1863 and 1869. In this extract Moscow is destroyed, having been taken by the French. The protagonist, Pierre, has been taken prisoner.

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Pierre gazed at the ruins and did not recognise districts he had known well. Here and there he could see churches that had not ...

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