Tolstoy’s Phoenix: From Method to Meaning in War and Peace

By examining Tolstoy's techniques and analyzing the structure of War and Peace, essayist George R. Clay offers a fresh perspective and jargon-free analysis of one of the world's greatest novels. Beginning with Tolstoy's strategies, devices, and structural elements, Clay moves beyond previous approaches and reveals the novel's larger thematic concerns, showing how all the pieces fit into an overall pattern that he calls the phoenix design.

"Excellent. . . . It moves marvelously. I like the careful discriminations [Clay] makes, the examples [he] chooses, and the way [he] keeps moving toward ever-greater subtlety." --Sven Birkerts