Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich (, 1905-1964)

Life and fate / Vasily Grossman ; translated and with an introduction by Robert Chandler - New York : New York Review Books , c2006. - xxxii, 880 p. ; 21 cm. - New York Review Books classics .

Originally published: New York : Harper & Row, c1985.

Grossman (1905-64) hoped that Life and Fate (1960), the sequel to his World War II novel In a Just Cause would appear in the USSR. Even during the 1960s ``thaw,'' that proved im possible. The translator compares the book to War and Peace , but it is closer to Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle in portraying a society that knows neither physical nor spiritual peace. Grossman uses one family's experiences of the months of the Stalingrad campaign to show the entire mad tapestry woven by Stalin and Hitler. Like Solzhenitsyn, he depicts laboratories, prisons, and the Soviet elite's uneasy privilege, but he also covers both sides of the front and follows Jews to the gas chambers. This sprawling, uneven novel is wrenching, and compelling in its portrait of loyal citizens who repel the Nazi invaders only to face renewed repression at home.

9781590172018

2005022739


World War, 1939-1945----Fiction

PG3476.G7 / Z3513 2006

FIC GRO