This paper proposes an understanding of war and criminology through the use of the creative sources offered by literature. These sources, while communicating exemplary meanings and morals, can help describe and comprehend the social and cultural landscapes of war and crime. Stendhal and Tolstoy are chosen as classical major providers of such sources, and an analysis of their respective novels, ‘The Charterhouse of Parma’ and ‘War and Peace’, will offer support to the idea that the inclusion of war in criminological thinking is timely as well as necessary
