War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
41 people recommended it in 28 threads, 2009–2025.
1 commenter pushed back on it — worth reading the threads.
What people on Hacker News said
War and Peace is a book that will raise the bar for fiction, I couldn’t start a new one for a month after finishing it, tried but I was still living in the book.
What I loved most about the book was how it conveys the complexity of life and the absurdity of historical analysis and the focus on "Great Men" against such complexity, which he compares to physicists trying to understand macro-phenomenon without taking into account the micro-phenomenon that add up to the macro effect.
War and Peace: There's just has so much life in this book. The things you read, they age with you over time.
It made me aware that someone as successful and powerful as Napoleon himself was by a large extent only a product of the people and the mood at the time. What I mean is that it wasn't him who inspired the people; it rather was just the Zeitgeist he was the perfect person for.
War and Peace came immediately to mind for me as well, but mostly because I do not think I have ever read a more magnificent novel.
I like slow burns of stories, and was riveted by War and Peace just as much as the show Midnight Mass.
Where it comes up
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