"War & Peace: The Graphic Novel" by Alexandr Poltorak is a remarkable adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's classic novel. This graphic novel presents a unique opportunity for teachers to make a canonical text more accessible to every student while still maintaining the integrity of the plot. By incorporating this graphic novel into the curriculum, educators can engage students who may struggle with the original text, providing them with a visual and immersive experience that brings the story to life.

By incorporating "War & Peace: The Graphic Novel" into the curriculum, teachers can create a more inclusive and engaging learning experience, especially as schools move toward AP for all. This adaptation not only makes the canonical text more accessible to a wider range of students but also serves as a gateway to further exploration of Tolstoy's masterpiece.

Even if the length of this book is massive, but we can easily say that this is the most greatest Russian book of all time.
Before reading this book, I saw the tv show (the recent one) and I immediately fell in love with it. The plot is really adventurous and it has everything ~ love, war, and well in the end peace. Will not say more to avoid spoilers!
If you haven’t read this one, what are you waiting for?

'War and Peace: The Graphic Novel' by Leo Tolstoy with adaptation by Alexandr Poltorak with art by Dmitry Chukhrai is a pretty ambitious project.

Taking place during the Napoleonic attack on Moscow, this story follows the lives of various people with various fortunes. In one storyline a man inherits his father's fortune. In others there are romance plots and the lives of those marching in the army.

I have never finished War and Peace, so I don't know if this adaptation will help someone write a successful book report, but it feels like a good overview of the main plots. The art style is meant to mimic painting of the era, but to me it felt a bit oversaturated and a bit unclear. I still liked reading this though.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free graphic novel.*

Let me say two things in advance: 1) The graphic novel was well done, I love the change of format. 2) I am really not a Tolstoy fan, I have DNFed so many of his books, it's tragic.

So my main issue with this graphic novel is not the graphic novel but the Tolstoy book which I find hella hard to get into and to stay interested. Yes, I know this is my problem. And yet I had hoped that the graphic novel could make the entire business more interesting to me and it did make it more interesting, but not hardcore so. So I enjoyed this, but it took me ages and it's Tolstoy's fault.

3 stars

The file expired before I could read it which was a pity because I would have liked to have read it.

Well... the art was beautiful, sometimes even stunning, which is why I'm giving this book two stars, but the rest of it was just so confusing that it felt like an uphill battle a lot of the time. The timeline was sporadic, it was nearly impossible to distinguish between certain characters, and some key plot points were glazed over. I feel like this would be a great companion to the original text, or a great gift for someone who is a diehard War and Peace fan. But as someone who has never read War and Peace, I could not keep up. When certain characters died I just didn't have enough background information to care, and when I'm reading a book I expect to feel mournful when a character dies, not like I didn't even know who they were.

Even in highly truncated form, this still proved far too removed from my idea of entertainment to get very far.

Thought this would an easy way to get into reading this classic since its usual thickness scares me.
The illustrations were really well done and you could see just how much research had gone into making the settings of the scenes as faithful as possible to what it might have been like at the period being portrayed.
However, and I guess that is a problem I would have had with the book as well, there were so many different characters that it was hard to keep track of who was who. The fact that this is a graphic novel really helped in a way, but I still felt confused a lot of the time.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-galley!

I just found it boring. The graphic novel suffered from the long list of characters, none of which I found memorable. I understand that it is hard to condense such a big book into a graphic novel.
I also did not like the art style. This one was not for me.

This is a fairly good adaptation of a classic . I enjoyed the graphics, which I assume will look even better in a printed copy
Was and Peace itself is a long and at times confusing novel, so the story does suffer a bit from that

I mean.. what is there to say. It's war and peace but probably a little easier to digest with the images. Personally the art is just too messy for my tastes but I suppose a desperate student might pick this up when they've failed to read the actual book

This was not for me. I hoped the graphic novel would help me with this massive classic but the format was unreadable. I also didn't like the coloring of this it was really confusing.
what I did enjoy was the explanation of all the characters at the beginning of the book, which was very helpful.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this!

I really tried but despite how pretty the art was I just couldn't get into this and found it hard to read. I wish this was available on the NetGalley app because that generally does make it easier to read graphic novels.

Never has a thick classic book been a fast read as when they turn to graphic novels.
I thought this was a quick and easy read with good pictures.

I think by turning old classics in to graphic novel more people would enjoy reading classics.

Thank you so much for this one.

Great adaptation. The illustrations are good enough and the text feels faithful to the original. Fun resource to introduce or reintroduce readers to a classic text. ARC provided.

I picked this up because I feel too dumb to actually understand actual Russian literature and I really liked this one and its illustrations.
I‘m not 100% sure if it‘s perfectly understandable for someone who hasn‘t read the original because actually it seems more approachable because of the graphics but because some characters look similar and there are a lot of characters and the original book explains it in more detail, it might still be really confusing (the original really is, too, though)

The illustrations were great, and it made reading Tolstoy much easier to digest for the casual reader.

Young Natasha looks like a demon,
The backgrounds are stunning
War & Peace is not something that can be condensed to a 200ish page graphic novel
There was very little telling of time changes. 4 years passed in 5 pages with barely any mention.
I was so very confused most of the time.
Not an abridged adaptation good for new readers or those who are less familiar with the source material.

I have read the Classic book before, so for me, this was another great experience to re-read this in a graphic format. Overall the illustrations were great & I recommend it be read by people who want to enjoy this work in a lighter format. The original book is a little intense read. Hence, this would be apt for people who wanted to read the actual book but haven't gotten around -try this: There might be more chance of you finishing this one. :-)

A for effort! But fell somewhat short.

Taking on War and Peace is a herculean effort and I was excited for this graphic novelization, I was curious how they would do it and to read it as a refresher more than a true reread.

First of all, there are sooo many characters in this book and even with the cast portraits at the beginning it was difficult to keep track of them and to visually tell them apart. Second, there's backstory and relationships and a political background explained in the book that doesn't come across here and if I was a first time reader I think I would be terribly confused. Even as someone whose read this book before I was still confused by some of the relationships and scenes in here, where does this fit in the context of the story? of 19th century Russia?

Definitely something for people who have already read War and Peace, sadly not something I'd recommend for first timers (the format makes it look approachable though).