War and Peace is considered one of the world s greatest works of fiction. It is regarded, along with Anna Karenina, as Tolstoy s finest literary achievement. It is a vast epic centred on Napoleon s war with Russia. Tolstoy s genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle—all of them fully realized and equally memorable.While it expresses Tolstoy s view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred characters. Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon s invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.