(.) One test of greatness in fiction is unflinchingness, and Life and Fate is utterly unflinching, taking the reader both into the prison camps of the Soviet state and the death camps of the Nazis (.) Life and Fate still seems to me to be a grossly under-read book.' - John Lanchester, London Review of Books What there is is an immense depth of feeling and experience. Once you get used to this, it comes to seem a virtue there’s no writerly showing-off. This is one of the hardest qualities to demonstrate, and it is made harder by the unpyrotechnic flatness of Grossman’s writing although it has its virtuosities and set pieces, these are at the level of the character sketch rather than the brilliant sentence or flashy paragraph. 'As it sweeps between world-shaking events and the exquisite minutiae of private life, Grossman's narrative energy and inexhaustible humanity light up every page of an absolute masterpiece.' - Boyd Tonkin.This is a novel about what it is to be a free human being.' - Martin Kettle, The Guardian And yet, if it were possible to distil the subject matter into one word - and it is so rich a work that the attempt is probably futile - that word would be freedom. There are terrible scenes, searingly described. 'The book's real subject is the daily endurance of the human spirit amid the monumental pressures of absolute war and totalitarian rule, communist as well as fascist.Still a possibility, but it's not a high priority Had a go at it, but didn't quite live up to all build-up Translated and with an Introduction by Robert Chandler.

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Life and fate by vasily grossman