“Almost 140 years after first publication of [Tolstoy’s War & Peace,] a nasty duel has broken out between rival versions of the weighty tome published in the US. The argument between the two new translations is, fittingly, one of weight. Acclaimed translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s faithful version of Tolstoy’s tale of birth, death, love, war and peace clocks in at 1,267 pages and features all of the 500 or so characters Tolstoy introduced… Facing it in bookshops across the US is British translator Andrew Bromfield’s reduced, ‘original’ version. The Bromfield War and Peace, first published in Britain earlier this year, runs to just 886 pages, does away with the French and the philosophical digressions, and boasts a happy ending.”