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Fiction » Historical Fiction » New Historical Fiction

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
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Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler

Vasily Grossman’s masterpiece Life and Fate is one of our most recommended books, especially popular with historians. It remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1964, but went on to attract enormous acclaim—and has been described more than once as “the War and Peace of the 20th century.” Stalingrad is its precursor. Initially published in the 1950s under the Russian title ‘For a Just Cause’, it has now been translated for the first time into English by Elizabeth and Robert Chandler, as well as being significantly reworked to reinsert text from earlier manuscripts that were censored during the Soviet era.

Equal to Life and Fate in its size and epic scope, the publication of Stalingrad is—as Marcel Theroux has remarked —“like discovering the Bayeux tapestry has a prequel.”

Commentary

As in Life and Fate, the best moments of Stalingrad are rendered with a depth and vividness that persuade you that they might have been moments from your own life… If the novel doesn’t quite touch the unbearable heights of Life and Fate, there are heart-rending moments of loss and separation.

Marcel Theroux in The Guardian

In a fascinating foreword Robert Chandler explains that for many years he was put off the idea of reading Stalingrad. He had been led to believe by “eminent figures” that it was a lesser work than Life and Fate, which he first translated into English in 1985 — and then updated, together with his wife, in 2006… At nearly 1,000 pages Stalingrad is slightly longer than its sequel. It is a less philosophical, more visceral novel than Life and Fate.

Tobias Grey in the Financial Times

Other books by Elizabeth Chandler, Robert Chandler and Vasily Grossman

Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman

Everything Flows
by Vasily Grossman

Russian Magic Tales by Robert Chandler

Russian Magic Tales
by Robert Chandler

Forever Flowing by Vasily Grossman

Forever Flowing
by Vasily Grossman

The Road by Vasily Grossman

The Road
by Vasily Grossman

A Writer At War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman, edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Lyuba Vinogradova

A Writer At War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945
by Vasily Grossman, edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Lyuba Vinogradova

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