War and Peace

Tolstoy follows the Rostovs, Bolkonskys and Bezukhovs through Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, from ballrooms to Borodino to the burning of Moscow, and periodically stops the novel entirely to argue with historians about why events happen. He denied it was a novel at all. It is the book most often named when people are asked for the greatest ever written, and the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation is the one that revived it in English.