Life and Fate is one of the most insightful and educational books I've ever read. Set in Russia around the defense of Stalingrad in WWII and the immediate aftermath, the book is extremely complex, intense, and articulate. It pays to learn a bit about Grossman's life before beginning and to look up facts, maps, and terms while reading.

Life and Fate is engaging and thoroughly thought-provoking. The subtle intricacies and comparisons between variations on Socialism, Communism and Fascism were enlightening and could only have been properly treated by someone like Grossman, who was there and really one of them (Soviet Jew). This is not your standard WWII book that we often read in the West. This is the story of the Eastern Front, which is often overlooked in Western Literature. As a child of the Cold War, I now have a much better understanding of how that era came into existence and some insight into the Soviet mindset. It is a worthy read, if you are willing to put in the time and effort to absorb all it has to offer. I imagine I'll be digesting and mulling it over for some time to come. 5 stars ( )

Though his characters are captivating, Grossman's philosophy on the good and on freedom is, as this reviewer puts it, rather hollow. But the novel is redeemed by the tragic beauty of its lives - the lives of people at the same time extraordinarily human and relatable, and yet laden by their time with fates beyond those of typical human existence. ( )

Excelente ( )

I guess the easiest way to review Life and Fate is to start of with a few breif points of reference. Structurally, the novel is all but indistinguishable from War and Peace. Austerlitz has been replaced by Stalingrad and Tolstoy's ruminations on the philosphy of history with Grossman's thoughts on, for example, anti-semitism and 'Socialism In One Country'.

But whereas War and Peace suffers considerably from Tolstoy's high-brow ramblings, Grossman's politico-philisophical perambulations serve well to knit the text together into a more meaningful and insightful novel. And the novel is meaningful and insightful. After so much has been published on the likes of the Holocaust and the Gulags, the sheer misery of living under Hitler or Stalin, I was skeptical that I would take anything away from reading through another novel on the same theme. Yet I was wrong. The depth of Grossman's understanding of the relationship between the individual and the totalitarian state is both authoritative and engrossing. The way in which Grossman deals with state collaboration and persecution is non-judgemental in a sense reminiscent of Chekhov's, capturing the experience; putting the individual first rather than some pre-concieved moralistic ideal. The character arcs of the protagonists intersect as they fall in and out of favour with the Soviet regime in a way not dissimilar from Chekhov's Ward No. 6. Talking of Cekhov, Grossman chooses to end the novel instead with a moving and beautiful allegory, and leaves the fate of the vast majority of the central characters unresolved.

As is mentioned in many of the other reviewson this web site, Life and Fate is highly autobiographical. From the point of view of detail, the novel benefits greatly from Grossman's experiences as a frontline reporter with Red Star from 1941 - 1945. Although the actual combat scenes are rather rare, Grossman's account of the front around Stalingrad is vivid. More important perhaps, are Grossman's more personal experiences. Both the death of his mother in the Ukraine and his tense and somewhat ambivelant relationship with the Soviet security services are fictionalised in the form of the main protagonist - Victor Struam's struggle with his Jewishness and his eventual submisiveness towards the state.

Indeed, the author deals with the theme of the individual and the police state in a compassionate, mature, understanding and humane way that, to be candid, is vastly superior to the efforts of some of Grossman's comtemporaries (i.e. Solzhenitsyn).

It's rare for one to come across an account of such an epoch by a writer who has both personal experience of the events involved and the requisite literary ability to pen these events convincingly and with the gravitas that such events demand. But in Life and Fate evidence of both the former and the latter are present in abundance. ( )

Zie: http://sn.im/rec-grossm (dutch) ( )