(Warning: contains spoilers!) As far as I know, it was John Galsworthy that first explicitly called War and Peace “the greatest novel ever written.” The credibility of that evaluation lies partly in literary criticism, and partly on whether one can come up with a rival contender. Is Ulysses better? Is Anna Karenina? Or Middlemarch? Or Moby Dick? Ultimately, one might acknowledge War and Peace to the greatest novel of all time simply because one can’t think of a better candida