Mapped
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Moscow, Petersburg, and the railway between them. Anna arrives in Moscow past a man crushed at the station, and dies under a train at Obiralovka before her story ends. Levin's Pokrovskoe is invented; Tolstoy drew it from his own country life at Yasnaya Polyana. The line between the two capitals is the most important place in the book.
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War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
Across the Napoleonic Wars of 1805 to 1812, Tolstoy follows the Bezukhov, Bolkonsky and Rostov families through the salons of Petersburg, the society of Moscow, the country estates, and the battlefields where private lives and vast history collide. The novel maps a real geography: the imperial capital and the old city, the Bolkonsky estate in the provinces, the field of Austerlitz where Prince Andrei looks up at the infinite sky, and Borodino, after which Moscow burns and the French begin their ruinous retreat.
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