Books by Vasily Grossman
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 It remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1964, but went on to attract enormous acclaim—and has been described more than once as "the War and Peace of the 20th century."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.”
“This unfinished novel by the Soviet Jewish writer pulls us into the Stalinist Terror….Everything Flows takes us through the Stalinist experience in a very condensed but pointed way. It takes us through the story of the famine in Ukraine, and there’s no way to understand Ukraine without understanding the horror of that famine.” Read more...
Forever Flowing
by Vasily Grossman
One of the narratives in Forever Flowing – the section dealing with the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s, during the collectivisation of agriculture – is just incredible in how Grossman was able to get inside the head of the characters. That story is just bloodstopping in its power.
The Road
by Vasily Grossman
It contains The Hell of Treblinka, his literary treatment of the legacy of the Treblinka death camp, originally published in 1944 – which was arguably the first published prose literary treatment of a concentration camp based on eye-witness accounts and whatever information Grossman could have gathered by himself.
A Writer At War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945
by Vasily Grossman, edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Lyuba Vinogradova
“These are the notes Grossman took while a war correspondent for the army newspaper, the Red Star. They are true first drafts of history – quick descriptions of what was going on around him as he sat in some truck or dugout, waiting for something to happen. He has a wonderful, cinematic eye, describing the look of burned-out villages, roads full of refugees, and so on. And he gets the voices of the soldiers and officers absolutely right. He famously never took notes as he interviewed people, but had such a good memory that in the evening he could go off into a corner and write it all down verbatim.” Read more...
The best books on The Siege of Leningrad
Anna Reid, Journalist
“Life and Fate…is probably the most important work of fiction about World War II. But, in fact, it is more than just a fiction because it is based on very close reporting from his time with the soldiers. It is a deliberate act of literary homage to Tolstoy as one can see in the title. It is definitely the War and Peace of the 20th century.” Read more...
The best books on World War II
Antony Beevor, Military Historians & Veteran
Interviews where books by Vasily Grossman were recommended
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1
Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo -
2
Homeland (Patria)
by Fernando Aramburu and Alfred MacAdam (translator) -
3
Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman and translated by Robert Chandler -
4
In Search of Lost Time
by Marcel Proust -
5
The Tale of Genji
by Murasaki Shikibu & translated by Edward G. Seidensticker -
6
Clarissa
by Samuel Richardson
Long Novels
Long Novels
Shorter is better is the mantra of the digital age, but for some of us, there is no greater pleasure than reading a really long novel. Here we’ve listed some of the novels recommended on Five Books that are 400,000 words or more long, from literary classics to potboilers.
World War 2 Historical Fiction
The dramatic events and scope of World War 2 make it one of the most popular settings for historical fiction. The range of books varies widely, from real-life stories written up as novels, to entirely fictional accounts which use one or more of the many horrific events of World War II as backdrop.
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.
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1
Russia at War
by Alexander Werth -
2
A Writer At War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945
by Vasily Grossman, edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Lyuba Vinogradova -
3
Reflections on the Russian Soul
by Dmitry Likhachov -
4
Less Than One
by Joseph Brodsky -
5
Conversations with Stalin
by Milovan Djilas
The best books on The Siege of Leningrad, recommended by Anna Reid
The best books on The Siege of Leningrad, recommended by Anna Reid
Glorified by Russia, glossed over by the West, the siege of Leningrad is rarely seen for what it was – a tragic story of tremendous suffering and death. The author of Leningrad, Anna Reid, tells us what really happened there
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…
The best books on Ukraine, recommended by Marci Shore
The tumultuous history of Ukraine and its continuing upheavals are not well understood beyond its borders. Yale historian Marci Shore recommends the best books on the land of many identities and languages that is modern Ukraine.
