Life and Fate

This novel on the epic scale is a powerful, deeply moving and devastating depiction of a world torn apart by war and ideological tyranny. It is, as well, perhaps the most complete condemnation of totalitarianism to emerge from Russia, for the message that the Vasily Grossman—of Jewish origin and once an honored Soviet writer—delivers is that Stalinism and Nazism, in their falsehood, cruelty, and inhumanity, closely resemble each other. As in War and Peace, the life of an entire society is evoked by the stories of a large number of vivid characters—most of them connected to one family, the Shaposhnikovs—and by a great variety of settings: domestic scenes, a physics laboratory (that of Victor Shtrum, probably a near-portrait of the author himself), German concentration and Soviet labor camps, the battlefield of Stalingrad. The desperate struggle for this city, which became the turning point of the Second World War, is at the center of the novel. Grossman depicts it, and its effects on the wives and destinies of his characters, with Tolstoyan grandeur that finds room for intimate detail. This, along with the author's courageous attack on the ideologies of repression, underlies the importance of Life and Fate as one of the great novels of the century.