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.
Books by Robert Chandler
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 It remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1964, but went on to attract enormous acclaim—and has been described more than once as "the War and Peace of the 20th century."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
Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler
Life and Fate, a novel set in World War II by Soviet writer Vasily Grossman, is one of our most recommended books on Five Books (including by historians). Modeled on Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman brought into it his experience as a journalist, accompanying the Red Army at major battles, including Stalingrad and Berlin. He was also among the first to enter Treblinka and witness firsthand the horrors of the Holocaust. Sadly for Grossman, the book was considered too harmful to be published in his lifetime.
Life and Fate is a long novel. If you want to listen to it as an audiobook, there's no unabridged version, BUT there is a dramatised version of Life and Fate, starring Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant, that lasts a manageable 8 hours.
(Stalingrad is the precursor to Life and Fate, translated into English for the first time in 2019 and also well worth reading)
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
The best books on World War II, recommended by Antony Beevor
The popular military historian Antony Beevor recommends some of his own favourite books about the Second World War.
The Best Vasily Grossman Books, recommended by Maxim D Shrayer
The Soviet writer bore witness to the horrors of Russia’s World War Two and the Shoah — and deserves a place in literary history, says scholar Maxim D Shrayer. He recommends the best books by and about Vasily Grossman.
The best books on War, recommended by Michael Howard
Fear is a great examiner of one’s character, argues the World War II veteran and eminent historian of war, Sir Michael Howard. He recommends the best books on war, two on strategy and three on what it’s actually like for soldiers and commanding officers.
The best books on The European Civil War, 1914-1945, recommended by Andreas Wesemann
Andreas Wesemann says WWI reparations did not fuel the rise of Nazism – Germany hardly paid any. He tells the true story of the rise of fascism
The best books on 20th Century Russia, recommended by Francis Spufford
Reading about Russia’s 20th century is like finding another vision of how the world might have been. Francis Spufford, author of Red Plenty, recommends books that tell the story of Russia in the last century — from Soviet science fiction set in capitalist wastelands to Khrushchev as raconteur.
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’
