Life and Fate

Life and Fate? What a pretentious title. How can any one book cover such grandiose concepts?

I assure you, though, that Grossman's book lives up to the title with flying colors. I read literature to answer the question: “What does it mean to be human?” Literature provides readers with new experiences, from which readers can understand this question a little more. Life and Fate answers this question better than Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and, most importantly, Tolstoy, without a doubt. Sure, Grossman is grim, and Life and Fate can really weigh on readers. But it truly is better than the classic, great Russian novels. It captures the spirits of the times very well. From the gulags of Siberia to the ruins of Stalingrad, it's life in a book.

Still, I cannot recommend this book to everyone. You need a basic understanding of the early Soviet Union to be able to really understand things. Just to list a bunch of historical happenings that came up in chronological order: the Russian Revolutions (of course); the Russian Civil War and the Whites; New Economic Policy under Lenin; Lenin's death and his Testament against Stalin; collectivization, dekulakization, and the famine of 1929; the industrialization of the 1930s; the Great Purge of 1937; and finally, a simple understanding of the course of World War II. If that wasn't already enough, you should know the names of Yezhov, Beria, Malenkov, Himmler, Paulus, Zhukov, and Chuykov. This book is for a specific audience, and I can say for certain that Life and Fate cannot find popularity in a general audience. I'd say this book is more for those interested in history rather than those interested in literature generally.

Life and Fate. The perfect title for an astonishingly good book.

I am going to call Life and Fate a masterpiece. Yes it is as good as the reviews I have just read say it is. On a personal level it is a long time since I have had an emotional involvement with the characters of a novel. Les Misérables maybe? Though a large cast the life and fate of the protagonists at the time of the battle for Stalingrad made powerful and compelling reading.

My copy is the Vintage edition 2006. It has an introduction by Linda Carter who writes she read the book in 3 weeks and took 3 weeks to “recover from the experience.” She had also “urged all my friends to read it.” She is of the opinion that the novel should be as famous as Doctor Zhivago and The Gulag Archipelago. I have never read these books but based on what I think of Life and Fate these must be truly remarkable books with such high praise. She also includes a historical background that is followed by a one page explanation of the translation by Robert Chandler. We also have a page that lists a few books on Stalin's Russia and Grossman himself. There is also a List of Chief Characters at the back of the book to aid the reader who may not be used to the complicated Russian names. I found this a great resource and referred to it constantly. As time went on the names became familiar.

The story itself revolves around the Shaposhnikova family and those that come into contact with them in one way or another. Dare I say it without seeming trite but almost a six degrees of separation story? This lead to the reader following the lives of everyone within that circle from those that fought and died to those that had issues with the state politics of the time. With that we became involved in an emotional rollercoaster be that the death of a son through to the agony of being untrue to one's self belief. All this told with emotionally charged prose by Grossman that left me as the reader spellbound. Some chapters were so astonishingly emotionally charged I was putting the book down to take stock. The mother whose son had been killed was sad beyond belief but the final thoughts of those going to their deaths in the gas chamber in chapter 48 part two will live with me forever.

A truly stunning book.