Tolstoy’s two great novels are nine years apart and share a method: a large cast, several families, and a narrator who will follow anyone for a chapter. War and Peace (1869) puts five families through the French invasion of 1812 and interrupts the story with essays on history and free will. Anna Karenina (1878) stays in drawing rooms and country estates and splits its attention between a marriage falling apart and a marriage being built.
War and Peace is the bigger book by a wide margin — about 562,000 words against 349,000 — and the more demanding one, because the historical chapters ask you to think rather than follow. Anna Karenina is tighter: two plots, one question, and the famous opening sentence about unhappy families.
If you have never read Tolstoy, Anna Karenina is the usual recommendation and the right one: it is long but not sprawling, and Levin’s farming chapters are a rest rather than a digression. War and Peace rewards readers who already enjoy nineteenth-century history.
Tolstoy came to think of Anna Karenina as his first real novel, and he spent years on the historical chapters of War and Peace because he did not trust the histories he had read. The two books are the argument of a long career, not variations on one success.
Side by side
Both editions are on this site, so the word counts and reading times are the numbers of the files you download. Screen versions are counted from the verified filmographies on the site; “none listed” means no version has been verified there yet, not that none exists.
| War and Peace | Anna Karenina | |
|---|---|---|
| Published | 1869 | 1878 |
| Author | Leo Tolstoy | Leo Tolstoy |
| Words here | 562,000 | 349,000 |
| Reading time | 31 h | 19 h |
| Screen versions | 6 | 20 |
| Free edition | War and Peace | Anna Karenina |
How to choose
- Read Anna Karenina first if you want a long novel with a clear through-line.
- Read War and Peace if you want the historical panorama and do not mind the essay chapters.
- Both are complete translations here; word counts differ between translations, and these are the counts of the files offered.
Questions readers ask
Which should a first-time Tolstoy reader choose?
Anna Karenina: shorter, two plotlines, and no essay chapters between the scenes.
Are the essay chapters in War and Peace part of the novel?
They are printed as part of it, and Tolstoy placed them between narrative chapters deliberately; many readers skip them on a first pass.
How long are they?
War and Peace is about 562,000 words, roughly thirty-one hours; Anna Karenina about 349,000 words, roughly nineteen hours.
Both novels are in the complete catalogue. More head-to-head comparisons are in the comparison index, and word counts for everything are in the word-count table.