"Literature deals with the intrusion of the extraordinary into the ordinary. This intrusion may begin in a work's very first sentence, as in Kafka's The Trial: "Somebody must have made a false accusation against Joseph K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong." Alternatively, it may be hinted at in the first sentences and more internally oriented, as in Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground: "I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man. No, I am not a pleasant man at all. I believe there is something wrong with my liver. However, I don't know a damn thing about my liver; neither do I know whether there is anything really wrong with me." Tolstoy avoids such dramatic openings and introduces the extraordinary into the ordinary by means of storytelling. Literature, he believes, tells us stories about experiences that take us, temporarily or permanently, out of our comfort zone, off well-trodden paths. The story can be simple or complex, funny or tragic, about a small incident or the shattering of one's world. Using an example from Tolstoy's own What is Art?, the story could be about a boy who encounters a wolf in the forest yet manages to run back to the safety of his home to tell the story to his parents, or to anyone who is willing to listen. In War and Peace, the story is about a series of brutal wars that Russia fought against France between 1805 and 1812, in which the Russian troops were pushed to the brink of defeat but eventually managed to overpower Napoleon's invading army and reestablish peace"--

Kathryn B. Feuer offers remarkable insights into Leo Tolstoy's creative process while he wrote War and Peace. She follows the novel through countless drafts and notes, illuminating its connection to earlier, unpublished, novels and to crucial new sources, both European and Russian. A novelist herself, Feuer explores the problems of character development, narrative voice, genre, and structure that Tolstoy ultimately resolved so brilliantly.

Tolstoy's epic combines history and fiction in his depiction of Russia's lengthy war with the French armies of Napoleon and its effects on the domestic lives of those caught up in the conflict.