acommonreader.st
Vasily Grossman, with mother and daughter Katya Picture sourceFrom Robert Chandler’s Facebook page earlier today: A few minutes ago I received the sad news of the death of Yekaterina Vasilievna Korotkova-Grossman, the daughter of Vasily Grossman. She was someone unusually sensitive, perceptive and witty. We got on well from our very first meeting and I […]
From the BBC article: Kenneth Branagh, Greta Scacchi, Mark Bonnar, Ann Mitchell, Doon Mackichan, Kenneth Cranham and more star in a dark and honest account of the epic battle of Stalingrad by celebrated war reporter and author, Vasily Grossman. Two part drama based on war reporter Vasily Grossman’s account also stars Greta Scacchi and Mark […]
Robert Chandler has a short article in The New Yorker on the censorship of Grossman’s book For a Just Cause (the recent English translation uses the title Grossman wanted—Stalingrad). The original publication process of the novel is a case study of Soviet editorial practices and censorship. Grossman worked on the manuscript from 1943 until 1949 […]
Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman Translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler NYRB Classics, 2019 Paperback, 1088 pages Judging by how limited my time was yesterday and only making my way through Robert Chandler’s introduction to Stalingrad, this may be a true “summer(-long) read” for me. And I’m fine with that. A few quick notes on […]
Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff Yale University Press, 2019 Hardcover, 424 pagesStalingrad by Vasily Grossman is officially released today. While I’m waiting for my copy to arrive by mail, I wanted to share a little about this outstanding biography. Alexandra Popoff has written several literary biographies and is a former Moscow […]
Richard at Caravana de recuerdos has recently covered Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, a novel I give my highest recommendation to without any hesitation (see here for the summary of my posts on the novel). Both of us read the NYRB edition, translation by Robert Chandler. While poking around recently some of Chandler’s other translations […]
A few links I wanted to pass on… An interview with Margaret Jull Costa at The White Review What is one to make of ‘a solidão de esparguete da girafa’ on page one? Should I have translated that as ‘the spaghetti solitude of the giraffe’ rather than ‘the lofty, long-drawn-out solitude of the giraffe’, which […]
I saw the unflinching force of the idea of public good, born in my country. I saw it first in the universal collectivization. I saw it in [the purges of] 1937. I saw how, in the name of an ideal as beautiful and humane as that of Christianity, people were annihilated. I have seen villages […]
But an invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power; it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating; it came between him and his family; it insinuated […]
I mentioned it in earlier posts so hopefully you downloaded the podcasts of Life and Fate from the BBC site before they were deleted last week. My reaction to their production is similar to the reaction I had with the book—a few minor quibbles but extremely impressed with what was accomplished. How do you turn […]
How was this possible? The Germans knew about these troop movements. It would have been no more possible to hide them than to hide the wind from a man walking through the steppe. Any German lieutenant, looking at a map with approximate positions for the main concentrations of Russian forces, could have guessed the most […]
I just realized I had not mentioned I was using the New York Review Books edition of this book with translation by Robert Chandler. For good summaries and analyses on Vasily Grossman and Life and Fate, I highly recommend the links in this post—I’m slowly working my way through them and they capture a lot […]
Continuing with some of the lesser points in Life and Fate…see my links post for Vasily Grossman and Life and Fate for reviews that cover both very well. Many of the links in that post mention Grossman’s love for Anton Chekov’s work and some similarity in style. Several authors are mentioned in Life and Fate, […]
Scanning through the links I posted on Vasily Grossman and his book Life and Fate I see the reviews do an extremely good job summarizing the book and covering his life. Instead of restating the same points I’ll post on a few topics in the book most of those reviews did not cover (probably for […]
The Europe of Vasily Grossman, the founder of a second tradition of comparison, was one in which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were at war. Grossman, a fiction writer who became a Soviet war correspondent, saw many of the important battles on the eastern front, and evidence of all of the major German (and […]