HENRY JAMES CALLED it a “loose baggy monster.” Others called it a masterpiece. And Woody Allen joked that he’d taken a speed-reading course and read it in twenty minutes: “It’s about Russia.” War and Peace, probably the most famous and certainly the longest novel by Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), is a hefty read, but it rewards readers with a panorama of romance, drama, and history. How much detail did Tolstoy put into War and Peace? The novel focuses on the lives of several major characters, like the lovable Natasha Rostova, but includes more than five hundred characters! What do you know about this epic book and the monumental author who wrote it? Take this Tolstoy quiz and test your knowledge.
1. Which novel was Tolstoy reputedly inspired to write after he viewed the body of a woman who had thrown herself under a train?
2. Which Tolstoy book began as a historical novel about an exiled Decembrist (a rebel in the 1825 revolt against the Russian czar) ?
3. In which treatise did Tolstoy argue that art should be morally uplifting?
4. Which of Tolstoy’s title characters is forced into a spiritual crisis by illness?
5. Which spots do Tolstoy’s books fill on Time magazine’s top-ten list of novels?
ANSWERS
1. Anna Karenina.
2. War and Peace. Tolstoy eventually chose to set the novel earlier, around the time of Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia.
3. What Is Art? (1897–1898).
4. Ivan Ilyich, in The Death of Ivan Ilyich. This 1886 story reflected Tolstoy’s own crisis of faith, which he describes in A Confession (1879–1881).
5. Anna Karenina at #1 and War and Peace at #3.