{"product_id":"life-and-fate-isbn-9781590172018","title":"Life and Fate","description":"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, \u003cb\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/b\u003e is an epic tale of World War II and a profound reckoning with the dark forces that dominated the twentieth century. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInterweaving 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/b\u003e 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis novel of unsparing realism and visionary moral intensity is one of the supreme achievements of modern Russian literature.\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e . . . has been widely hailed as one of the greatest books of the 20th century. For my money, \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e is one of the greatest books, period.” —Becca Rothfeld, \u003ci\u003eJewish Currents\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Vasily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR.\" —Martin Amis\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What better time to read \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e, Vasily Grossman’s epic novel about the second world war, to put our current troubles into perspective? Grossman’s book, which traces the fate of the family of the brilliant physicist Viktor Shtrum at the time of the Battle of Stalingrad, records how humanity endured the monstrous evils of Nazism and Stalinism, surviving like weeds in the cracks of concrete slabs.”—John Thornhill, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e#1 on Antony Beevor's 2009  \"Five Best of World War II Fiction\" list (\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“One of the greatest works of literature to come out of Russia during the 20th century, \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e could be looked at as the closest thing the Second World War had to a \u003ci\u003eWar and Peace\u003c\/i\u003e. An absolute sprawling and haunting masterpiece that should be on every list.” —\u003ci\u003eFlavorwire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A delightfully  readable 2006 translation by Robert Chandler, this edition preserves nearly all the  color of Russian sayings and dark humor while remaining a devastating portrait of  Stalin's Russia. Grossman shows how Russian communism was a moral and ideological  dead end, an almost exact counterpart to Hitler's Nazism that was preordained from  the moment Lenin began killing his opponents instead of talking to them. . . . In the end,  he leads the reader to the inescapable conclusion that Communism, like Nazism, had  only one goal: power. Coming from a man who once sat in on the privileged inner circles  of this government, as an acclaimed journalist and author, this is a devastating  message indeed.” —\u003ci\u003eForbes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A chronicle of the past century's two evil engines of  destruction-Soviet communism and German fascism—the novel is dark yet earns its right  to depression. But it depresses in the way that all genuinely great art does—through  an unflinching view of the truth, which includes all the awfulness of which human  beings are capable and also the splendor to which in crises they can attain. A great  book, a masterpiece, \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e is a book only a Russian could write.\" —Joseph  Epstein, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e“The greatest Russian novel of the 20th century. . . . \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e will continue to dazzle and inspire—as unerring a moral guide today as it was 50 years ago.” —\u003ci\u003eForeign Polic\u003c\/i\u003ey\u003cp\u003e\"It's a masterpiece.\" —Frederic Raphael\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Grossman's  depiction of Soviet citizens as they struggle to survive is magnificent. \u003ci\u003eLife and  Fate\u003c\/i\u003e has been called the greatest Russian novel of the 20th Century. I agree.\" —\u003ci\u003eDaytona  Beach News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"World War II’s\u003ci\u003e War and Peace\u003c\/i\u003e. Written (mainly) from the vantage point  of a Soviet Jew, this masterpiece was judged far too ambivalent in its treatment  of the 'Great Patriotic War' to be published in the author’s lifetime.\" —Niall Ferguson,  \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e is not  only a brave and wise book; it is also written with Chekhovian subtlety.\" —\u003ci\u003eProspect  Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[A] classic of 20th century Russian literature.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Grossman’s account of Soviet life—penal, military and civilian—is encyclopedic  and unblinkered . . . enormously impressive . . . A significant addition to the great library  of smuggled Russian works.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Takes its place beside  \u003ci\u003eThe First Circle\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDoctor Zhivago\u003c\/i\u003e as a masterful evocation of the fate of Russia  as it is expressed through the lives of its people.” —\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Among the most damning  indictments of the Soviet system ever written.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“To read \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e is, among other things, to have some sense of how it feels not to be  free. . . . In more ways than one, \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e is a testament to the strength of character  that terrorized human souls are capable of attaining. It is a noble book.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Wall  Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Read it, and rejoice that the 20th century has produced so thoughtful  and so profound a literary humanist. The sufferings and self-revelations of these  characters provide us with some of the most troubling and occasionally uplifting  examinations of the human heart to be found in contemporary literature. A novel for  all time.” —\u003ci\u003eWashington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[An] extraordinarily dark portrait of Soviet  society.” —David Remnick,\u003ci\u003e The Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Fascinating and powerful . . . \u003ci\u003eLife and  Fate\u003c\/i\u003e does something that, as far as I know, no other novel has tried to do fully—and that is to portray believing Soviet Communists as ordinary characters, rather  than as predictable embodiments of evil.” —\u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e has no equals in  contemporary Russian literature . . . I would go so far as to say that Grossman in \u003ci\u003eLife  and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e is the first free voice of the Soviet nation.” —\u003ci\u003eCommentary\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Vasily Grossman's novel ostensibly concerns World War II, which he covered as a Soviet war correspondent. But his true subject is the power of kindness—random, banal or heroic—to counter the numbing dehumanization of totalitarianism. . . . By the novel's end, both communism and fascism are reduced to ephemera; instinctive kindness, whatever the consequences, is what makes us human.” —Linda Grant, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e blog\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eVasily Grossman\u003c\/b\u003e (1905—1964) was born in Berdichev in present-day Ukraine, the home of one of the largest Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. After studying chemistry and working as a mining engineer, he was discovered by Maxim Gorky, whose support enabled him to begin publishing his writing. Grossman was a combat correspondent during World War II, covering the defense of Stalingrad, the fall of Berlin, and writing the first account in any language of a German death camp. Although the manuscript for \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e was initially seized and suppressed by the KGB in 1960, and Grossman did not live to see it published, it was smuggled out of the USSR a decade later with the help of Andrei Sakharov and Vladimir Voinovich. The novel was eventually published throughout Europe and North America in the early 1980s; it appeared in Russia in 1988. \u003ci\u003eA Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941—1945, \u003c\/i\u003ea collection of Grossman’s journalistic writings and notebook entries, was published in 2006.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobert Chandler\u003c\/b\u003e is the translator of selections of Sappho and Apollinaire, as well as of Pushkin’s \u003ci\u003eDubrovsky\u003c\/i\u003e and Leskov’s \u003ci\u003eLady Macbeth of Mtsensk\u003c\/i\u003e. His co-translations of Andrey Platonov have won several prizes in both the UK and the US. He is the editor of \u003ci\u003eRussian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida\u003c\/i\u003e; his most recent translation is of Hamid Ismailov’s \u003ci\u003eThe Railway\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300098953445,"sku":"NP9781590172018","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590172018.jpg?v=1767731416","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/life-and-fate-isbn-9781590172018","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}