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4.46 AVERAGE
4.46 AVERAGE
I've never thought I'd consider a novel "best ever", but Life and Fate could be the one. An incomprehensibly vast and deeply engaging web of intersecting stories surrounding the battle for Stalingrad, each envisioned with superb detail and authenticity - each deeply human, utterly moving - the novel relies on a cast of characters that include military commanders, factory personnel, victims of Hitler's and Stalin's concentration camps, Hitler and Stalin themselves, soldiers, peasants uncertain which totalitarian regime will hurt them less in the future, and a vast array of other characters. Vasily Grossman's book also happens to invalidate all literature and film about World War Two that I was exposed to as a kid in the USSR: it didn't speak the full truth. This is like War and Peace, only better - more real, more urgent, more human.
Romanzo potente e densissimo, pagine piene di lirismo assoluto. Faticoso, ma una lettura dovuta. Un'analisi lucida dell'orrore della guerra, delle illusioni dello stalinismo e i suoi orrori.
" Qualcosa di straziante e sinistro la sfiorò, e bastò qule contatto a colmarla del freddo edel buio delle migliaia di verste della nostra povera Russia sterminata, a darle la sensazione di non sapersela cavare nella tundra della vita"
"Tutti sono colpevoli di fronte a una madre che ha perso il figlio in guerra, e da che mono e mondo tutti cercano- invano- di giustificarsi"
" In uno stato totalitario la violenza è talmente grande che smette di essere strumento e diviene oggetto di culto e di esaltazione mistica e religiosa"
" Qualcosa di straziante e sinistro la sfiorò, e bastò qule contatto a colmarla del freddo edel buio delle migliaia di verste della nostra povera Russia sterminata, a darle la sensazione di non sapersela cavare nella tundra della vita"
"Tutti sono colpevoli di fronte a una madre che ha perso il figlio in guerra, e da che mono e mondo tutti cercano- invano- di giustificarsi"
" In uno stato totalitario la violenza è talmente grande che smette di essere strumento e diviene oggetto di culto e di esaltazione mistica e religiosa"
Outstanding literary depiction of life in the Soviet Union during WW2, and one of the greatest novels about war I have ever read.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Soviet Russian War and Peace. I was intrigued to read this book after learning it had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfiche after most of the drafts and even the typewriter tape was confiscated by the KGB. It has a TON of characters, but luckily as a character index in the back. Very memorable.
At 856 pages (and for a slow reader) this was every bit as attritional as the subject matter. That said, what a fantastic piece of kit.
slow-paced
Having read [b:War and Peace|656|War and Peace|Leo Tolstoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413215930l/656._SY75_.jpg|4912783] a couple of months ago in which Tolstoy pointed out already in the mid nineteenth century the role of accident and fate in the success of military campaigns, thus underlining their futility, I wondered how any European leader could ever have embarked on another takeover knowing the outcome of Napoleon's campaigns. But of course there was WWI and WWII as if nothing had been learned about trusting Emperor style dictators driven by monstrous personal ambition; after Napoleon, Europe nevertheless allowed Stalin and then Hitler to rise to power almost unchallenged.
[b:Life And Fate|88432|Life and Fate|Vasily Grossman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320447178l/88432._SY75_.jpg|2435598] deals mostly with the confrontation between the German and the Russian regimes lead by these two monomaniacs during WWII and again we see how blindly their personal vision was subscribed to by huge numbers of both populations without question.
And Grossman points out just as Tolstoy did, how large a role is played by accident and fate in the final outcome.
[b:Life And Fate|88432|Life and Fate|Vasily Grossman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320447178l/88432._SY75_.jpg|2435598] deals mostly with the confrontation between the German and the Russian regimes lead by these two monomaniacs during WWII and again we see how blindly their personal vision was subscribed to by huge numbers of both populations without question.
And Grossman points out just as Tolstoy did, how large a role is played by accident and fate in the final outcome.
An impressive masterpiece
No review can really do justice to this great book, but I'll try. For starters it is important to know that it is written by a convinced soviet-citizen, a journalist with fame in the Soviet-Union, back in the fourties and fifties of the past century. But Grossman also was a journalist that came to understand how horrible the excesses of stalinism had been. And he thought that after the reckoning of Stalin by Chroetsjev, the time was there to open up the "real existing socialism" to freedom and democracy.
This book - most of it was written in the beginning of the 1960s - totally respires that hope. So with hindsight you can imagine it was very brave and risky at the same time of Grossman that he put it down in writing. The stage he has situated his message in is that of the second world war, and especially the crucial episode of the battle of Stalingrad, end 1942-beginning 1943, the first defeat of Nazi-Germany and the beginning of the end for Hitler.
Grossman has been inspired by Tolstoi's 'War and Peace', of exactly 90 years before (and he doesn't conceal this): just as Tolstoi he offers a broad panorama of an important era, when Russia's fate was hung by a thread; Grossman gives attention to leaders (he even stands in the shoes of Hitler and Stalin) and to ordinary people (soldiers, civilians, a grandmothers, ..) and regularly he offers general considerations on history, friendship and other wisdoms of life.
But there are also lots of differences with 'War and Peace'. The "inevitable force of history" of Tolstoi is replaced by the enormuous power of the state, that is the totalitarian state, that molds and crushes individuals without mercy. Grossman illustrates this through some characters, with the very loyal partycommissioner Krymov as the most tragic victim. He even equals the totalitarism of Stalin with that of Hitler, a very surprising thing for a soviet-communist at that time.
But the great force of 'Life and Fate' lies in the drawing of the human characters. The evolution of the most important of them, the nuclear scientist Strum for example, illustrates that most dramatically. Grossman's heroes are weak, but they are human; in this sense the author follows another great example of his, Tjechov.
Very special is the attention Grossman gives to the holocaust. Apparently he was one of the first to bring the real size of the persecution of the jews to the public attention (already in 1943). In this novel he makes this colossal drama very tangible through some characters. Horrifying. But he also frames it into the context of antisemitism in general, even in the Soviet-Union.
The binding thread in his novel is that of the unstoppable craving of life for freedom. It is this message that has made impossible to get the book published in the sixties. The KGB has destroyed (almost) all copies of the manuscript; and even a very courageous letter of Grossman to Chroetjov himself didn't alter anything. The author died a few years later, a broken man. Happily he had given a copy to a far-away friend, so that eventually, in 1980, it could be published.
'Life and Fate' certainly is one of the epic novels of the 20th Century, especially for its themes. In a literary respect it contains episodes of a breathtaking, dramatic beauty, though it is a rather conventionally told story. Certainly it has soms weak episodes too, and some storylines are not quite elaborated enough. And for the unsuspecting reader the 243 characters (with the usual Russian first names, subnames, last names and nicknames) the reading comfort will be severely tested. But nevertheless, there is only one word for this masterpiece: impressive!
No review can really do justice to this great book, but I'll try. For starters it is important to know that it is written by a convinced soviet-citizen, a journalist with fame in the Soviet-Union, back in the fourties and fifties of the past century. But Grossman also was a journalist that came to understand how horrible the excesses of stalinism had been. And he thought that after the reckoning of Stalin by Chroetsjev, the time was there to open up the "real existing socialism" to freedom and democracy.
This book - most of it was written in the beginning of the 1960s - totally respires that hope. So with hindsight you can imagine it was very brave and risky at the same time of Grossman that he put it down in writing. The stage he has situated his message in is that of the second world war, and especially the crucial episode of the battle of Stalingrad, end 1942-beginning 1943, the first defeat of Nazi-Germany and the beginning of the end for Hitler.
Grossman has been inspired by Tolstoi's 'War and Peace', of exactly 90 years before (and he doesn't conceal this): just as Tolstoi he offers a broad panorama of an important era, when Russia's fate was hung by a thread; Grossman gives attention to leaders (he even stands in the shoes of Hitler and Stalin) and to ordinary people (soldiers, civilians, a grandmothers, ..) and regularly he offers general considerations on history, friendship and other wisdoms of life.
But there are also lots of differences with 'War and Peace'. The "inevitable force of history" of Tolstoi is replaced by the enormuous power of the state, that is the totalitarian state, that molds and crushes individuals without mercy. Grossman illustrates this through some characters, with the very loyal partycommissioner Krymov as the most tragic victim. He even equals the totalitarism of Stalin with that of Hitler, a very surprising thing for a soviet-communist at that time.
But the great force of 'Life and Fate' lies in the drawing of the human characters. The evolution of the most important of them, the nuclear scientist Strum for example, illustrates that most dramatically. Grossman's heroes are weak, but they are human; in this sense the author follows another great example of his, Tjechov.
Very special is the attention Grossman gives to the holocaust. Apparently he was one of the first to bring the real size of the persecution of the jews to the public attention (already in 1943). In this novel he makes this colossal drama very tangible through some characters. Horrifying. But he also frames it into the context of antisemitism in general, even in the Soviet-Union.
The binding thread in his novel is that of the unstoppable craving of life for freedom. It is this message that has made impossible to get the book published in the sixties. The KGB has destroyed (almost) all copies of the manuscript; and even a very courageous letter of Grossman to Chroetjov himself didn't alter anything. The author died a few years later, a broken man. Happily he had given a copy to a far-away friend, so that eventually, in 1980, it could be published.
'Life and Fate' certainly is one of the epic novels of the 20th Century, especially for its themes. In a literary respect it contains episodes of a breathtaking, dramatic beauty, though it is a rather conventionally told story. Certainly it has soms weak episodes too, and some storylines are not quite elaborated enough. And for the unsuspecting reader the 243 characters (with the usual Russian first names, subnames, last names and nicknames) the reading comfort will be severely tested. But nevertheless, there is only one word for this masterpiece: impressive!