Moscow is lost, occupied by Napoleon's French hordes.
Is Russia lost? Is all lost?
Students of history will already know the answer. But whether or not you do, Leo Tolstoy's 'War and Peace IV' is an extraordinary and epic telling of what happened next.
Through the eyes of the Russian soldier-aristocrat Pierre, we see mercy and inhumanity behind the lines.
He even embarks on a plot to assassinate Napoleon. Spoiler alert: he failed.
On the home front, the strands are tied together with death, marriage and hope.
But will there be a happy ending after 15 years and 1,000 pages?
Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece is a complete semester of Russian and French history, using the zoom button to focus on its impact on families from the aristocracy to the peasants.
It paints a picture of petty jealousy, pride and forbidden love in the Russian stately homes.
If you like costume dramas and the novels of Jane Austen ('Pride and Prejudice', 'Sense and Sensibility'), this is the granddaddy of them all. The same goes for fans of Bernard Cornwell's 'Sharpe' novels and TV series', starring Sean Bean.
'War and Peace' was made into a BBC TV series in 2016, written by Andrew Davies and starring Lily James and James Norton.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian author, a master of realistic fiction and one of the world’s greatest novelists. Tolstoy’s major works include 'War and Peace' (1865–69) and 'Anna Karenina' (1875–77), two of the greatest novels of all time and pinnacles of realist fiction. Beyond novels, he wrote many short stories and later in life also essays and plays.
In the years following the publication of 'War and Peace' Tolstoy - who was born to a Russian aristocratic family - had a spiritual awakening that made him a committed Christian anarchist and pacifist. His philosophy inspired Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
