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Tuesday, 28 May 2019
I spotted this maybe Russian readers might like it
I'll write something new later, but
I spotted this maybe Russian readers might like it
5star rating
Stalingrad is the prequel to Life and Fate, one of the twentieth century’s greatest novels. This is its first publication in English.
In April 1942, Hitler and Mussolini plan the huge offensive on the
Eastern Front that will culminate in the greatest battle in human
history.
Hundreds of miles away, Pyotr Vavilov receives his call-up papers and
spends a final night with his wife and children in the hut that is his
home. As war approaches, the Shaposhnikov family gathers for a meal:
despite her age, Alexandra will soon become a refugee; Tolya will enlist
in the reserves; Vera, a nurse, will fall in love with a wounded pilot;
and Viktor Shtrum will receive a letter from his doomed mother which
will haunt him forever.
The war will consume the lives of a huge cast of characters – lives
which express Grossman’s grand themes of the nation and the individual,
nature’s beauty and war’s cruelty, love and separation.
For months, Soviet forces are driven back inexorably by the German
advance eastward and eventually Stalingrad is all that remains between
the invaders and victory. The city stands on a cliff-top by the Volga
river. The battle for Stalingrad – a maelstrom of violence and firepower
– will reduce it to ruins. But it will also be the cradle of a new
sense of hope. Stalingrad is a magnificent novel not only of war but of all
human life: its subjects are mothers and daughters, husbands and
brothers, generals, nurses, political officers, steelworkers, tractor
girls. It is tender, epic, and a testament to the power of the human
spirit.
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