Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” is a book for all time. It feels as though it has always existed; the text seems so familiar the moment we open the first pages of the novel, and many of its episodes are deeply memorable: the hunt and the Christmas festivities, Natasha Rostova’s first ball, the moonlit night in Otradnoye, Prince Andrei in the Battle of Austerlitz... Scenes of “peaceful,” family life alternate with events significant to the course of world history, yet for Tolstoy they are equally valuable, linked in a single flow of time. Every episode is important not only for the development of the plot but also as one of the countless manifestations of life—a life saturated in every moment—which Tolstoy teaches us to love. This edition reproduces the complete set of illustrations for the novel “War and Peace,” created by the outstanding Czech artist Stanislav Hudeček (1872–1947).