Reading War and Peace in a Modern World:
A Conversation with Professor Emerita Adele Barker

Spring 2026

Watch the Full Interview

Before we dive into the highlights, we invite you to watch the full conversation between HSP Program Director Micah Lunsford and Professor Adele Barker. In this engaging exchange, Professor Barker discusses the inspiration behind her upcoming course, reflects on her lifelong love of Russian literature, and Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace.

Why This Book, Why Now

Micah Lunsford: Adele, thanks for joining me to talk about your upcoming course. It’s ten weeks on War and Peace—a novel people often admire from a distance. Why this book, and why now?

Adele Barker: I’m delighted to talk about Russian literature anytime. As for War and Peace: most of us have a shelf where the “someday” books live. They’re the big ones—the ones that leer at us as we walk by because we haven’t made the time. I’ve heard from many HSP students, “I wouldn’t have read this if a class hadn’t nudged me.” A book like War and Peace asks for our time and attention. That’s the point of spending ten weeks together—we can slow down enough to truly live with it.

Micah: Slowing down feels countercultural now.

Adele: Exactly. This summer I read a colleague’s nonfiction book very slowly—ten pages a day. It was Benjamin Nathans’ Pulitzer Prize winning work To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement and it reminded me that deep reading is a gift. With War and Peace, the gift is to sit with one long book and move through it carefully. I’m also returning to Tolstoy differently than I did earlier in my career. I write more now, so I read as a writer. In class we’ll step into Tolstoy’s study, consider his notebooks, diaries, drafts, and the legendary story of his wife, Sofia Andreevna, copying the manuscript by hand multiple times. We’ll ask: how did he build something this vast while raising a family in a very real, noisy house?

Reading Slowly in a Fast World

Micah: There’s a joy to immersing in a long novel—a kind of resistance to our always-on world. For the many people who want to read War and Peace but haven’t, what makes it worthy of the time?

Adele: Not everyone would agree—Henry James famously called Tolstoy’s works “loose and baggy monsters.” I disagree. This isn’t just a novel; it’s a Russian novel. Tolstoy didn’t want tidy European forms. He thought in epics—hence the hundreds of named figures and the sweeping vision of a society in motion. If you’re curious about Russia, identity, and the long relationship between Russia and the West, this book is a remarkable portal. The opening pages take place at a St. Petersburg soirée—people speaking French, as the aristocracy did—just as Napoleon advances. That shift from emulation to invasion is more than a plot point; it’s a wound. Tolstoy is probing Russia’s self-understanding at a moment of profound disillusionment.

Micah: So the novel is wrestling with questions that still matter.

Adele: Very much so. The 19th-century Russian writers talked about the prokliatye voprosy—the “accursed questions.” Who am I? What do I owe others? Do I believe in God? What does it mean to live a good life? Those are Tolstoy’s questions, too. They’re not abstract; they’re lived through characters whose choices have moral weight. Russia’s literary tradition moved relatively late from religious chronicles into a secular mode, so philosophy and spirituality remained braided into the 19th-century novel. War and Peace keeps asking: who are we—Russians in relation to Europe, and human beings in relation to ourselves?

Exploring Tolstoy’s Expansive World

Micah: For practical matters: are you going to help students navigate the famous sprawl? I’ve heard there are “600 characters.”

Adele: Yes—and don’t panic. Many of those names are fleeting—like a soldier glimpsed for a sentence. We’ll concentrate on the central figures and the arcs that truly matter. I’ll encourage students to use any translation they prefer; modern editions are thoughtful about guides—character lists, notes on historical versus fictional figures, and explanations of Russian naming conventions. Patronymics can be confusing at first, but they make sense quickly. More importantly, the names fade as the people come forward. Natasha Rostova, whom we meet as a girl and watch become a woman. Pierre Bezukhov, whose spiritual and moral searching becomes a compass for the book. Tolstoy believed human beings are born good, but society—with its politics and ambitions—pulls us away from ourselves. Watching these characters try to “become who they are” is part of the novel’s power.

Micah: I appreciate that you’ll be our guide through complexity so we can reach the heart of the book. Beyond the classroom tools, what kind of experience are you hoping students will have?

Adele: I suspect it will be personal, and varied. Some will be drawn into questions of Russia and Europe and see parallels with the present; others will fall in love with the texture of 19th-century life. Tolstoy is a master of detail—he doesn’t miss much. My hope is that everyone gets the chance to breathe, to focus on a page, to read closely, and to feel transported. In ten weeks, we’re not racing—we’re savoring. That changes how the book works on you.

What You’ll Explore

• Epic scope, human scale: How Tolstoy’s “not-quite-a-novel” contains multitudes without losing the heartbeat of individual lives.
• Russia and the West: From French-speaking salons to the shock of invasion, how the novel stages an identity crisis that still echoes.
• The accursed questions: Freedom, faith, goodness, and what it means to “become who you are.”
• Reading as craft: Tolstoy’s notebooks, family collaboration, choices on structure and style, and why details matter.
• Practical navigation: Translations, character lists, patronymics, and strategies for keeping the people straight while savoring the story.

Who This Course Welcomes

If you’re an explorer at heart—someone who loves opening a big map and tracing new routes—this seminar is your passport. If you’re an every-day learner who wants a friendly, no-pressure place to ask questions, try ideas, and finally read the book you’ve been meaning to read for years, you’ll feel at home. No prerequisites. Just curiosity, a willingness to slow down, and a desire to read closely with good company.