The Soviet Union combined with the Second World War was a maelstrom of pounding, boundless human suffering about which it is hard to feel any kind of nostalgia or romance. If I were to choose one to re-read, I would at first glance prefer War and Peace, but that’s because it’s less hard on the mind and soul and it evokes an era to which I am more attracted. They’re both Russian, very long, vast in scope, and utterly gripping. Where War and Peace has Borodino at its heart, Life and Fate revolves around Stalingrad. The book has been likened to a 20th century Soviet answer to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Or rather, the non-place of such collective systems, particularly of a violent nature, in the future of humans – if they are to have a future. These questions are at the core of Vasily Grossman’s splendid, heart-breaking, hope-making novel, which explores man’s attachment to freedom, the centrality of random kindness to making us human, and the place of the individual in (large-scale) state-sponsored systems.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |