DAILY PHOTO: Jain Mutt, Shravanabelagola
Reply
BOOK REVIEW: War & Peace: The Graphic Novel Adapted by Alexandr Poltorak [from the work by Leo Tolstoy]
War and Peace: The Graphic Novel by Leo TolstoyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: September 27, 2022
Get Speechify to make any book an audiobook
Ambitious. Many readers will feel it’s overly ambitious or even impossibly ambitious. It’s not just the challenge of capturing a sprawling 1,220-page tome in a 220-page graphic novel. Tolstoy’s work has a vast cast of characters and captures a broad set of both fictional and factual events whose broad contours are determined by Napoleon’s wars in Europe, culminating in his adventures into Russia. (In other words, the narrative arc wasn’t organized in such a manner as to be readily compressible, but to capture real world events.)
I must make a confession. Usually, when I’m reviewing a graphic novel adaptation of a work of literature, I’ve read the source material. In this case, I haven’t, and so I may not be the best person to comment on how accurately Poltorak and Chukhrai condense events. I can say that the pacing of the book – particularly in the latter half – is a bit like taking in the world through the window of a speeding train. Of the two most important characters, this is particularly true of the experience of Prince Andrew, whose major moments are “blink and you’ll miss them.” Pierre’s arc seems to be covered in greater detail, though still at breakneck pacing.
Given all that, many people will say to themselves: “Realistically, I am never going to read a 1000+ page novel about the experience of Russian aristocratic families leading up to and during the Napoleonic French invasion, even if it has love triangles, conniving inheritance disputes, and plenty of good ole family dysfunction.” The early part of the book is mostly rich people sitting around at soirees discussing war (in peace) as they live out their various familial and romantic dramas. If you’re that person, this graphic novel maybe the perfect solution for you, and I’d recommend it.
View all my reviews
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
Stand [Free Verse]
Feet feeling rock, until one loses the ability to tell where the sole ends and the mountain begins. If one were rooted like a gnarly cedar, it would feel no different. When there is nothing but mind, there is no longer anything to differentiate...
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
DAILY PHOTO: Vindhyagiri at a Distance
Marquis de Sade Limerick
There once was a Marquis named de Sade whose philosophy many found odd: The pursuit of pleasure, by any measure, is to spoil by not sparing the rod!
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
Two Becomes One [Haiku]
Fickle Fortunes [Rhyming Couplets]
Don't rest your hopes on a four-leaf clover, or pray the gray will lift and blow over. A lucky rabbit would retain its foot, and a four-shoed horse can still go kaput. In life, friends and foes can do-si-do, and which one is which, you may not know.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
The Flow of Wild Ideas [Free Verse]
We need a flow of wild ideas, though some will drift ever onward, into the vast nowhere: beyond application or reason. One will catch on the shore, others will pile into it, becoming a beaver dam of bad ideas. Unstable? Maybe. But the flood will rise, and lift that stuck idea, and send the whole logjam spiraling out to the deeps where maybe one idea will float apart, and find the light that makes it look worth chasing.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 