Life and Fate
Author
Original Work
Translator
Foreword / Afterword
Robert Chandler
Language
Year
2006
Publisher
Country
United States
Pages
896
ISBN
978-1590172018
A book judged so dangerous in the Soviet Union that not only the manuscript but the ribbons on which it had been typed were confiscated by the state, Life and Fate is an epic tale of World War II and a profound reckoning with the dark forces that dominated the twentieth century. Interweaving a transfixing account of the battle of Stalingrad with the story of a single middle-class family, the Shaposhnikovs, scattered by fortune from Germany to Siberia, Vasily Grossman fashions an immense, intricately detailed tapestry depicting a time of almost unimaginable horror and even stranger hope. Life and Fate juxtaposes bedrooms and snipers’ nests, scientific laboratories and the Gulag, taking us deep into the hearts and minds of characters ranging from a boy on his way to the gas chambers to Hitler and Stalin themselves. This novel of unsparing realism and visionary moral intensity is one of the supreme achievements of modern Russian literature.— Google Books
Press Reviews
- The Guardianby John Self · Aug 2022
An expanded reissue of the author’s 1942 novel about a Red Army unit encircled by German forces is overtly polemical but also vividly written
- The Guardianby Luke Harding · Jun 2019
Grossman’s 1952 novel is a masterly requiem for the Soviets who died in the battle with Hitler’s Germany
- The Guardianby Gillian Slovo · Nov 2010
<p><strong>Gillian Slovo</strong> welcomes a stirring introduction to the Soviet era by one of its greatest writers</p>
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