Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Vasily GrossmanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Import
Published: 2006-10-24
ISBN: 0099506165
Number of pages: 912
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Book Reviews of Life and Fate
Book Review: The Freedom of the Common Man
Summary: 5 Stars
Vasily Grossman's "Life and Fate" - the Awful Truth of History
02/12/09 | by Ian Malcomson | Categories: book reviews
This is one of the best fictional accounts of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-5 that I have ever read. Grossman weaves a complex story of characters based on a set of very real events that take place in the context of the Battle of Stalingrad. The reader gets to see how both sides of the Eastern Front deal with the terrible adversities, challenges, and complexities of modern warfare as they are acted out through the personal decisions and convictions of individual men and women engaged in the life-and-death struggle of war. While on the surface the struggle for control of Stalingrad becomes the political objective for both the German and the Soviet armies in late 1942, Grossman introduces a whole other drama that takes the reader inside the consciences of the common foot soldier, inmates at a POW camp, local peasants, field general involved in the seige, bureaucrats secretly planning the death of millions and the very leaders themselves. By connecting all these disparate parties together in various situations surrounding the epic battle, Grossman comes to the timely conclusion that there is no morally right position in war that reflects the general values of society. Everybody either fights to destroy or survive, and that both fascism and communism, as the governing ideologies, are both interchangeably evil. Both Stalin and Hitler are portrayed as monsters whose only purpose is to inflict pain and destruction of others in the interest of wielding power. There is no glory in an armed conflict that attempts to strip the individual of his or her right to freedom. In all this, the author does a capable job in preserving the individual against the scourge of the tyrant. That for Grossman is the real monument to human endeavour. Acts of bravery, courage, and determination are the true forces that define the fate of man's freedom, and not the mailed fist of a crackpot dictator seeking to destroy. Lots of thought-provoking dialogue in this story, which rivals anything coming out Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" trilogy. His description of the Battle of Stalingrad is both detailed in technical terms and poignant to human emotions. This is a one-of-a-kind narrative that allows the reader to feel like he or she is a big part of the action. I found this to be a very rewarding read because it put right inside the indiviudal minds and souls of those who both witnessed and participated in this tragic event.
Summary of Life and Fate
Suppressed by the KGB, Life and Fate is a rich and vivid account of what the Second World War meant to the Soviet Union.On its completion in 1960, Life and Fate was suppressed by the KGB. Twenty years later, the novel was smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfilm. At the centre of this epic novel looms the battle of Stalingrad. Within a world torn apart by ideological tyranny and war, Grossman?s characters must work out their destinies. Chief among these are the members of the Shaposhnikov family ? Lyudmila, a mother destroyed by grief for her dead son; Viktor, her scientist-husband who falls victim to anti-semitism; and Yevgenia, forced to choose between her love for the courageous tank-commander Novikov and her duty to her former husband. Life and Fate is one of the great Russian novels of the 20th century, and the richest and most vivid account there is of what the Second World War meant to the Soviet Union.
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