Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was born on December 12, 1905, in
Berdichev, a Ukrainian town that was home to one of Europe’s
largest Jewish communities. In 1934 he published both “In the Town
of Berdichev”—a short story that won the admiration of such diverse
writers as Maksim Gorky, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Isaak Babel—and a
novel, Glyukauf, about the life of the Donbass miners. During the
Second World War, Grossman worked as a reporter for the army
newspaper Red Star, covering nearly all of the most important
battles from the defense of Moscow to the fall of Berlin. His vivid
yet sober “The Hell of Treblinka” (late 1944), one of the first
articles in any language about a Nazi death camp, was translated
and used as testimony in the Nuremberg trials. His novel For a Just
Cause (originally titled Stalingrad) was published in 1952 and then
fiercely attacked. A new wave of purges—directed against the
Jews—was about to begin; but for Stalin’s death in March 1953,
Grossman would almost certainly have been arrested. During the next
few years Grossman, while enjoying public success, worked on his
two masterpieces, neither of which was to be published in Russia
until the late 1980s: Life and Fate and Everything Flows. The KGB
confiscated the manuscript of Life and Fate in February 1961.
Grossman was able, however, to continue working on Everything
Flows, a work even more critical of Soviet society than Life and
Fate, until his last days in the hospital. He died on September 14,
1964, on the eve of the twenty-third anniversary of the massacre of
the Jews of Berdichev, in which his mother had died.
Robert Chandler’s translations of Sappho and Guillaume Apollinaire
are published in the series “Everyman’s Poetry.” His translations
from Russian include Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, Leskov’s Lady
Macbeth of Mtsensk and Aleksander Pushkin’s Dubrovsky and The
Captain’s Daughter. Together with his wife, Elizabeth, and other
colleagues he has co-translated numerous works by Andrey Platonov.
One of these, Soul, was chosen in 2004 as “best translation of the
year from a Slavonic language” by the AATSEEL (the American
Association of Teachers of Slavonic and East European Languages);
it was also shortlisted for the 2005 Rossica Translation Prize and
the Weidenfeld European Translation Prize. Robert Chandler’s
translation of Hamid Ismailov’s The Railway won the AATSEEL prize
for 2007 and received a special commendation from the judges of the
2007 Rossica Translation Prize. Robert Chandler is the editor of
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and the author of a
biography of Alexander Pushkin.
Elizabeth Chandler is a co-translator of Platonov’s Soul and
Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter.
Anna Aslanyan’s translations into Russian include works of fiction
by Mavis Gallant, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Lethem, Rod Liddle, and Ali
Smith. She is a contributor to the BBC Russian Service.
"Interspersed with meditations on Russian history, the revolution,
and the nature of violence and freedom, Everything
Flows is Grossman's great moral reckoning with the crimes of
Stalinism." —Daniel Beer, The Wall Street Journal
“A half century after his death, Vasily Grossman's fiction still
provides harrowing insight into the legacy of Stalinism, and the
historical trauma that continues to fuel ethnic tensions within
Ukraine.” —NPR Books
"Vasily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR" --Martin Amis"After he
submitted his masterful World War II novel Life and Fate to a
publisher in 1960, the KGB confiscated the manuscript, his notes
and even his typewriter (the book was later smuggled out of the
country and printed in 1974). But this didn’t quiet Grossman, whose
indictments of Stalinist Russia were at least as damning as those
of George Orwell and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Understandably bitter
over the suppression of his work, the author worked on Everything
Flows—a shorter, but even more eviscerating, meditation on the
monstrous results of the Soviet experiment—until his death from
cancer in 1964. This new translation brings his searing vision to
light... Fortunately, the KGB couldn’t keep Grossman’s books
under wraps forever. His testament stands as a fitting tribute to
the millions of voices that were prematurely silenced."—Drew Toal,
Time Out New York"...a richly-woven narrative of historical events
and individual destinies — a masterpiece of pain, moral outrage and
gallows humour. Grossman has become recognised not only as one of
the great war novelists of all time but also as one of the first
and most important of witnesses to the defence of Stalingrad, the
fall of Berlin, the consequences of the Holocaust" —Business
Standard
A "brilliant and courageous novel...readers will find hope in the
narrator's uncommon capacity to forgive and accept."–Library
Journal"Few novels confront human suffering on as massive a scale
as this one....Grossman's individual by individual portrayal of
anguish gives readers a heartrending glimpse of the
incomprehensible. " --Publishers Weekly"Remarkable...it trembles
with the vision of freedom." --Irving Howe, The New York
Times "[I]t is as eloquent a memorial to the anonymous little
man in the Stalinist state as Dr. Zhivago is to the artistic spirit
in post-Czarist Russia and The First Circle to the scientific
intelligentsia." --Thomas Lask, The New York Times "Grossman
traces the blame for the terror of the Stalin years back through
Lenin, to the roots of the Russian character, to the mystical
national soul that Russians have always considered their greatest
strength...Grossman put his finger on the crux of the issue as
today's Russians see it: What responsibility do they bear for the
horrors perpetrated in the course of Russian and Soviet history?"
--Los Angeles Times
Ask a Question About this Product More... |