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  • Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman book cover
  • Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman book cover
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Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

War, family, and power in the twentieth century

$24.90 USD
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AlbakiReads Editorial

War, family, and power in the twentieth century

Set against the Battle of Stalingrad, Vasily Grossman’s novel connects the upheaval of World War II with the fortunes of the Shaposhnikov family, whose members are dispersed across Germany and Siberia. Its broad canvas moves among sharply different settings, including domestic rooms, scientific laboratories, the Gulag, and the battlefield. By placing ordinary family life alongside state power and wartime violence, the book examines how individuals are caught within the forces shaping the era. The description also points to a tension between immense suffering and the possibility of hope.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in historical fiction centered on World War II and Stalingrad
  • Readers drawn to family stories that span multiple locations
  • Readers seeking fiction that explores political power, war, and individual lives

Themes

World War IIFamily and displacementState powerWar and human sufferingHope amid crisis

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

A book judged so dangerous in the Soviet Union that not only the manuscript but the ribbons on which it had been typed were confiscated by the state, Life and Fate is an epic tale of World War II and a profound reckoning with the dark forces that dominated the twentieth century.

Interweaving a transfixing account of the battle of Stalingrad with the story of a single middle-class family, the Shaposhnikovs, scattered by fortune from Germany to Siberia, Vasily Grossman fashions an immense, intricately detailed tapestry depicting a time of almost unimaginable horror and even stranger hope.

Life and Fate juxtaposes bedrooms and snipers' nests, scientific laboratories and the Gulag, taking us deep into the hearts and minds of characters ranging from a boy on his way to the gas chambers to Hitler and Stalin themselves.

This novel of unsparing realism and visionary moral intensity is one of the supreme achievements of modern Russian literature.
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I highly recommend to for anyone looking for inner clarity

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Great shopping experience! The book arrived quickly, was well packaged, and matched the description perfectly. I would definitely shop with you again

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