Shelfology Book Pairing

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

"White Nights" is a very familiar, wonderful triangular love story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, originally published in 1848, early in the writer's career. The sub title of this story is "A Sentimental Story from the Diary of a Dreamer".

by graf Leo Tolstoy

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle--all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual's place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad": " "To read him . . . is to find one's way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane."