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, Life and Fate is an epic tale of World War II and a profound reckoning with the dark forces that dominated the twentieth century.
Interweaving 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.
Life and Fate 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.
This novel of unsparing realism and visionary moral intensity is one of the supreme achievements of modern Russian literature.
Genre: Historical
Interweaving 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.
Life and Fate 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.
This novel of unsparing realism and visionary moral intensity is one of the supreme achievements of modern Russian literature.
Genre: Historical
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Used availability for Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate
Hardback Editions
February 1986 : USA Hardback
September 1985 : UK Hardback
Paperback Editions
January 2017 : UK Paperback
April 2011 : UK Paperback
October 2006 : UK Paperback
May 2006 : USA Paperback
July 1995 : UK Paperback
December 1992 : UK Paperback

Title: Life and Fate
Author(s): Vasily Grossman
ISBN: 0-00-271207-5 / 978-0-00-271207-1 (UK edition)
Publisher: HarperCollins
Availability: Amazon UK
March 1987 : USA Paperback
1986 : UK Paperback

Title: Life and Fate
Author(s): Vasily Grossman
ISBN: 0-00-654158-5 / 978-0-00-654158-5 (UK edition)
Publisher: Flamingo
Availability: Amazon
Kindle Editions
June 2012 : USA Kindle edition

Title: Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics)
Author(s): Vasily Grossman
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Availability: Amazon
April 2011 : Australia, Canada, UK Kindle edition