Publishers Weekly
★ 04/29/2019
Grossman’s epic, sprawling novel from 1952 is a masterpiece of intertwined plots that cascade together in a long sequence of militaristic horror. Grossman (1905–1964), best known for this book’s sequel, Life and Fate, was on the scene as a Soviet war reporter during WWII’s Nazi siege of Stalingrad, and the novel teems with his firsthand observations. The action is told from dozens of perspectives, ranging from humble workers to Hitler himself. Most of the characters have some relationship to Stalingrad’s Shaposhnikov family. After an opening dinner party, the Shaposhnikovs are separated by a war that has drawn ever nearer to their city. Alexandra, the family matriarch, is forced into exile with her oldest daughter, Ludmila. Ludmila’s husband, Viktor Shtrum, an important scientist, is worried that his Jewish mother has been a victim of the Holocaust. Alexandra’s second daughter, Marusya, and her daughter, Vera, display heroism in their wartime work in an orphanage and a hospital. The beautiful Zhenya, Alexandra’s youngest daughter, has left Nikolay Krymov, a communist thinker, and is being courted by Pyotr Novikov, a gifted military strategist. Two of the family’s grandchildren, Tolya and Seryozha, are in military units defending the city. When the bombing of Stalingrad begins, Grossman cuts between viewpoints, rewinding time over and over again. A spectacular afterword details the extent of censorship the text suffered under Stalin. As a stand-alone novel, this is both gripping and enlightening, a tour de force. When considered as a whole with Life and Fate, this diptych is one of the landmark accomplishments of 20th-century literature. (June)
From the Publisher
Winner of the Modern Language Association’s 2019 Lois Roth Award for a Translation of a Literary Work
Nominated for the 2020 Read Russia Prize
Fiction Finalist, Three Percent’s Best Translated Book Award 2020
"Stalingrad is an epic novel, Tolstoyan in its proportions and ambition. . . . [A]n ideal historical novel for a new generation of readers.” —Time's "Must-Read Books of 2019"
"At last, the Russian novelist-journalist's mighty prequel to 'Life and Fate', his epic of the battle of Stalingrad and its aftermath, has received a definitive—and hugely powerful—English translation. A seething fresco of combat, domestic routine under siege and intellectual debate, it confirms that Grossman was the supreme bard of the second world war.” —The Economist, “Our books of the year”
"One needs time and patience to read Stalingrad, but it is worth it. Moving majestically from Berlin to Moscow to the boundless Kazakh steppe . . . A multitude of lives and fates are played out against a vast panoramic history." —Ian Thomson, Evening Standard's "Book of the Week"
“In its English version, Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad is a beautifully readable novel of considerable length, gripping from beginning to end as it moves seamlessly from the dramas of historical events to the small, intimate predicaments of family and everyday life while war is raging. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler’s historical understanding and archival research made it possible to produce a book that salvages the novel from the fate of its mangled original, censored in the process of writing, editing, and production. Thanks to this English translation, Stalingrad is repaired and made available to readers of the original in Russian and to readers of other languages as well. This translation is both a literary achievement and a contribution to scholarship.” —Modern Language Association citation for the 2019 Lois Roth Award
"If you have read Grossman before, you will already very likely know that you urgently want to read Stalingrad. If you haven’t, I can only tell you that when you do read this novel, you will not only discover that you love his characters and want to stay with them—that you need them in your life as much as you need your own family and loved ones—but that at the end . . . you want to read it again." —Julian Evans, The Daily Telegraph
"This is a big event . . . [Stalingrad] gives voice to a dizzying array of experiences . . . You do feel as though you are there, wandering through those devastated streets among the starving, dead, and mad." —Claire Allfree, Daily Mail
"A dazzling prequel . . . His descriptions of battle in an industrial age are some of the most vivid ever written . . . Stalingrad is Life and Fate’s equal. It is, arguably, the richer book — shot through with human stories and a sense of life’s beauty and fragility." —Luke Harding, The Observer
"[F]ew works of literature since Homer can match the piercing, unshakably humane gaze that Grossman turns on the haggard face of war." —The Economist
"An extraordinary novel by war correspondent Grossman, completing, with Life and Fate, a two-volume Soviet-era rejoinder to War and Peace . . . A classic of wartime literature finally available in a comprehensive English translation that will introduce new readers to a remarkable writer." —Kirkus, starred review
"Grossman’s epic, sprawling novel from 1952 is a masterpiece of intertwined plots that cascade together in a long sequence of militaristic horror. . . . When the bombing of Stalingrad begins, Grossman cuts between viewpoints, rewinding time over and over again. A spectacular afterword details the extent of censorship the text suffered under Stalin. As a stand-alone novel, this is both gripping and enlightening, a tour de force. When considered as a whole with Life and Fate, this diptych is one of the landmark accomplishments of 20th-century literature.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“If you could only ever read one book about war, this should probably be it.” —Valeria Paikova, Russia Beyond
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-03-18
An extraordinary novel by war correspondent Grossman (1905-1964), completing, with Life and Fate, a two-volume Soviet-era rejoinder to War and Peace.
Improbably, Grossman survived the purges of the Stalin era even though the dictator's gaze often fell on him. Toward the end of Stalin's life, Grossman set to work on the pair of books that would recount what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. His characters come from both sides of the battle and include a German lieutenant who crosses the Don River with his company in triumph but, by the end of the cycle, comes to understand the error of his ways. Grossman's great subject, in his fiction as well as his reportage, was the terrible nature of totalitarianism. His characters are given to saying things that in the wrong ears could land them in trouble, as when an officious commissar insists that a neighborhood bomb shelter is meant to save people like him, to which a woman, hiding from the shelling, replies, "The fat brute—anyone would think he's a German. He thinks Hitler's here already. But we're Soviet citizens. We're all equal. He's the one who should be thrown out to die—not our children!" Soldiers, nurses, schoolteachers: All wither under the months of street-by-street fighting, as do the refugees who flood in from the surrounding countryside, having "heard the roar of the approaching avalanche." For them and millions of others, Grossman writes in a burst of poetry toward the end of the volume, the "fire of Stalingrad was the fire of Prometheus," promising undying resistance to fascism even as the great fish in the Volga hug the riverbanks, hoping to keep safe from the rain of metal, and the ants, mice, bees, and other tiny creatures of the Soviet earth try to accustom themselves to "the earth's constant trembling."
A classic of wartime literature finally available in a comprehensive English translation that will introduce new readers to a remarkable writer.
