num_pages: 1088
description: Vasily Grossmans Life and Fate has been hailed as a twentieth-century War and Peace. However Life and Fate is only the second half of a two-part work the first half of which was published in 1952. Grossman wanted to call this earlier work Stalingradas it will be in this first English translationbut it was published as For a Just Cause. The characters in both novels are largely the same and so is the story line; Life and Fate picks up where Stalingrad ends in late September 1942. The first novel is in no way inferior to Life and Fate; the chapters about the Shaposhnikov family are both tender and witty and the battle scenes are vivid and moving. One of the most memorable chapters of Life and Fate is the last letter written from a Jewish ghetto by Viktor Shtrums mothera powerful lament for East European Jewry. The words of this letter do not appear in Stalingrad yet the letters presence makes itself powerfully felt and it is mentioned many times. We learn who carries it across the front lines who passes it on to whom and how it eventually reaches Viktor. Grossman describes the difficulty Viktor experiences in reading it and his inability to talk about it even to his family. The absence of the letter itself is eloquentas if its contents are too awful for anyone to take in.
language: English
title: Stalingrad
publisher: NYRB Classics