Life and Fate: Amazon.co.uk: Vasilii Grossman: Books

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Product Description

Contemporary Review
'A noble monument to the suffering endured by Russians and
especially by Russian Jews at the hands of the Nazis'
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

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4 star:		(1)
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Average Customer Review

4.9 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

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55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece, 11 Nov 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Life and Fate (Paperback)

I was always of the view that, thanks to the PhD industry, there weren’t any neglected masterpieces out there. Life and Fate has proved me wrong. What I loved about this book was its scale, its ambition, and its earnestness. Grossman has something of passionate importance to tell the world. The book could just as easily have been entitled Good and Evil, Freedom and Slavery, or War and Peace.

Despite the book’s settings - German concentration and Russian labour camps, the Lubyanka, Stalingrad - it’s not fundamentally grim. Grossman is as interested in the nature of Good as he is of Evil. A 50 year old woman doctor ‘adopts’ a small boy as the doors of the gas chamber shut. The commander of a tank battalion spares his men by holding fire for ten minutes with Stalin breathing down his neck.. A Russian woman comforts a dying German soldier.

Grossman believed in the individual and the individual’s essential humanity. This is easy to say and seems sententious when made written down but he also believes in literature with a capital L. The task he sets himself is to create characters and settings that demonstrate this humanity.

Fabulous stuff. Be warned. Clever postmodernist novels are going to look pretty trivial after this.

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47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional - check out the last pages first, 7 Feb 2006

By	M. Belcher (Lund, Sweden) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Life and Fate (Paperback)

I can't really add much to the previous reviews, as this is an exceptional novel and truely gripping all the way through (no mean feat for nearly 900 pages). If you're familiar with other Grossman writings (e.g. his diaries) then you can see that many of the characters and situations are taken from real experiences and people that he encountered during his war reporting. To me that makes it an even better read, as whilst a novel, it is based soundly on real life.

One tip, check out the character index at the back of the book, before you start reading. Unless you're good with Russian names, it can be a bit hard to follow at first. The index (which I only discovered three quarters of the way though) really helps with identifying who is who.

No question that this is a five star book.

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazingly deep and moving portrayal of Soviet society, 20 Sep 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Life and Fate (Paperback)

This has to be one of the finest works of fiction I have ever had the pleasure to read. It is a collosal work depicting the struggles of a large cast of people against the backdrop of the Stalingrad conflict. The beauty of this book is how Grossman manages to include almost every aspect of Soviet society into the text. This gives his work a sense of completeness but also adds to the sense of futility; not one of the characters is left unscathed from a tragedy caused by either the war, or the state. A major attribute is Grossman's ability to make us care what happens to the individuals involved, some of whom become entrapped in Kafka-esque situations. A further help is Grossman's own philosphical insights into all the subjects he treats, including an intriguing passage in which he compares Communism to Fascism. The translation is good and the prose flows, the story is excellent and gripping. This novel is a masterpiece of human suffering and survival in a waring socilaist state.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Monument to the fallen heroes of Stalingrad
My gauge of a book is the degree I feel myself immersed in the tale. Vasily's prose allowed me to feel the dust and the sweat and to sense around me the hoard's of fascists... Read more

Published 4 months ago by Michael Gale

5.0 out of 5 stars Freedom!
I believe Life and Fate is one of the greatest books of the 20th century. This is a definitive account of the madness of totalitarianism filtered through the poignant and... Read more

Published 8 months ago by demola

5.0 out of 5 stars Putting the 'human' back into dehumanized
I wish to add my voice to the many fine reviews of this masterpiece.The book is certainly long,but I read it in one week. Read more

Published 11 months ago by Mr. Anthony Wilde

5.0 out of 5 stars Epic and insightful
This is an outstanding book. Epic in its ambition, it manages to completely evoke not just a place and time but to give a shattering insight into the nature of Soviet Russia... Read more

Published 15 months ago by T. William

5.0 out of 5 stars Life and Fate - A book everyone should read
I concur. This is a brilliant book and one that everyone should read. So ambitious and so successful. The themes that run throughout are complex, real, and human. Read more

Published 16 months ago by S. Rea

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Just A War Story - A Book Full of Wonders
This book is about human nature, a subject which many authors have shown to be thrust into prominence by hardship and deprivation. Read more

Published 17 months ago by Clifford

5.0 out of 5 stars Flawed masterpiece
I have now finished this book and essentially, my original view at three quarters through stands. I still give it five stars - not because it is the greatest novel since hype... Read more

Published on 10 Jul 2007 by Pillowtail

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Russian novel of the Soviet era
This is a monumental novel, worthy of the description that has sometimes been applied to it of being the twentieth century's War and Peace. Read more

Published on 30 Mar 2007 by John Hopper

5.0 out of 5 stars First Class
I stumbled upon this epic brick of a novel 18 months ago following Chandler's recomendation in The Guardian's Review. Read more

Published on 24 Feb 2007 by pingpong

5.0 out of 5 stars IMPORTANT
Suffering KGB suppression for nearly thirty years, Grossman's masterpiece is a damning indictment of the ideological basis of the Soviet Union. Read more

Published on 8 Jan 2007 by Madly Bobbington-Blythe

› See all 15 customer reviews...

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	89% buy the item featured on this page: Life and Fate 4.9 out of 5 stars (15)
	5% buy A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945 4.5 out of 5 stars (10) �6.99
	2% buy Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving Stalin's Gulag 5.0 out of 5 stars (9)
	2% buy Kolyma Tales 4.5 out of 5 stars (4) �8.44


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