Life and Fate; a Novel
New York; (1985): Harper & Row. First American Edition. Thick Large Octavo. Item #029888
880 pages. Translated by Robert Chandler. On its completion in 1960, this book was suppressed by the KGB. Twenty years later it was smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfilm. At the center of this epic work is the battle of Stalingrad. Within a world torn apart by ideological tyranny and war, Grossman's characters must work out their destinies. Grossman had covered Hitler's Operation Barbarossa from the inside, writing dispatches for the Red army's official publication Red Star. He reported the insane order of Stalin using tens of thousands of soldiers just as cannon fodder as well as the vicious rapes and maiming of civilians as they moved into Germany. How the work was smuggled out of the Soviet Union is a remarkable story and the fact that the book was printed in a fairly small print run, makes the original editions very scarce. Bound in green cloth, spine lettering silver, slight crease to spine otherwise near fine in an unclipped pictorial dust jacket.
Price: $225.00