Books by Robert Chandler
The poet Robert Chandler is the translator of Pushkin’s Dubrovsky and the melodrama Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Leskov. Robert’s translations of Sappho and Apollinaire are published by Everyman’s Poetry and his translations of Russian prose include Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate and several volumes by Andrey Platonov.
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 It remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1964, but went on to attract enormous acclaim—and has been described more than once as "the War and Peace of the 20th century."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.”
“Oh, the Chandler volume is simply wonderful. The Russian tradition is very interesting because it does seem to be sui generis in some respects…. The Russians have the most single stories of any of the cultures studied. That’s partly to do, probably, with the isolation of certain districts” Read more...
Marina Warner, Novelist
Interviews with Robert Chandler
The Best Tales of Soviet Russia, recommended by Robert Chandler
Robert Chandler, one of the best known translators of Russian literature, recommends some of his favourite tales of Soviet Russia. There’s the one about a dog in space and the one about the Soviet café which stocked nothing but champagne and Mars bars…
Interviews where books by Robert Chandler were recommended
Marina Warner on Fairy Tales
‘It’s a long time since ogres have seemed so absolutely real,’ says Marina Warner, author and long-time scholar of fairy tales. Which makes now as good a time as any to immerse ourselves in the twisted truths of the fairy tale realm, with Warner’s selection of the best books of, or about, other-worldly tales of mischief and subversion, dreams and laughter, ‘hope against hope’
