Books like “War and Peace”

What to read after “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “War and Peace”

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1
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- War Fiction
Stevens, a butler at an English country house, sets out on a motoring trip in 1956 and looks back over decades of service. Recalling his employer's political misjudgements and his own missed chances with the housekeeper, he begins to see what a life given to duty has cost him.
2
A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov · 1840
Similar setting: “Russian Empire”
- Russian Empire
- Love Triangle
Pechorin is a clever, restless officer serving in the Caucasus, bored by everything and unable to value what he wins. In five linked tales he manipulates the people drawn to him, a princess, a smuggler, an old comrade, and coolly explains his own cruelty. A portrait of a gifted man who has nothing left to want.
3
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1878
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
Anna Karenina, married to a senior official, meets the young officer Vronsky at a Moscow railway station, and the attraction between them overturns her settled life. In parallel, the landowner Levin wrestles with faith, work and his courtship of Kitty. The novel follows both households and the price society demands.
4
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol · 1842
Similar setting: “Russian Empire”
- Russian Empire
Chichikov arrives in a provincial Russian town and charms its officials and landowners. He has come to buy serfs who have died but are still listed on the tax rolls, and his odd scheme draws him into the vanity and corruption of the society around him.
5
The Bronze Horseman
Paullina Simons · 2000
Similar setting: “War Fiction”
In Leningrad in 1941, as the German army tightens its siege, Tatiana meets Alexander, a young officer with a secret. Their love is forbidden by her family and by the war, but through hunger, loss and the frozen winter they hold on to each other and to the hope of survival.
6
The Daughter of Time
Josephine Tey · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Laid up in hospital with a broken leg, Inspector Alan Grant is bored until he is given a portrait of Richard III. Wondering whether the king really murdered the princes in the Tower, he reopens a five-hundred-year-old case from his bed, working only from books.
7
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell · 1936
Same genre: “Historical fiction”
Spoiled Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara sees her world torn apart by the American Civil War. Determined to rebuild her family's plantation and her fortune, she schemes and marries her way through the ruins of the Old South, chasing a man she cannot have.
8
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak · 2005
Same genre: “Historical fiction”
- War Fiction
- Coming of Age
Narrated by Death, the story follows Liesel Meminger, a girl sent to live with a foster family in Nazi Germany. She steals books, shares them with a Jewish man hiding in the basement, and grows up amid bombs, loss and small acts of kindness.
9
Schindler's Ark
Thomas Keneally · 1982
Same genre: “Historical fiction”
- War Fiction
In German-occupied Poland, Oskar Schindler, a Czech businessman and opportunist, employs Jewish workers in his factory. As the war turns and deportations intensify, he uses his wealth and connections to shield them, at growing personal risk.
10
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Star-Crossed Lovers
A brilliant scholar, dissatisfied with everything he can learn, makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles for a taste of true experience. What follows leads him to love, ruin and the limits of human striving. A verse tragedy about knowledge, temptation and the soul.
11
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr · 2014
Same genre: “Historical fiction”
- War Fiction
- Coming of Age
During the German occupation of France, a blind girl and her father flee Paris for the walled city of Saint-Malo, carrying a valuable jewel. In Germany, an orphan with a gift for radio repairs is drawn into the war machine. Their separate paths move slowly toward the same besieged town in August 1944.
12
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017
Same genre: “Historical fiction”
- War Fiction
- Coming of Age
A young woman in colonial Korea, Sunja, leaves home for Japan with a husband she barely knows and raises a family that lives as outsiders for generations. Through war and poverty, the household holds on to its dignity and its secrets.