Patrick Bateman
05-24-2005, 06:07 PM
I had read Anna Karenin (sic.) but preferred Dostoevsky to Tolstoy until I started War and Peace. It has the greatest number of fully realised characters of any novel I have read and the appearance of real life figures such as Napoleon is handled with mastery. The greatest compliment I can pay this novel (and I am near the conclusion of Book Three) is that it is on a par with the truly exceptional Napoleonic novel The Charterhouse of Parma which is one of the greatest works of art ever.