Zed

Life and Fate. The perfect title for an astonishingly good book.

I am going to call Life and Fate a masterpiece. Yes it is as good as the reviews I have just read say it is. On a personal level it is a long time since I have had an emotional involvement with the characters of a novel. Les Misérables maybe? Though a large cast the life and fate of the protagonists at the time of the battle for Stalingrad made powerful and compelling reading.

My copy is the Vintage edition 2006. It has an introduction by Linda Carter who writes she read the book in 3 weeks and took 3 weeks to “recover from the experience.” She had also “urged all my friends to read it.” She is of the opinion that the novel should be as famous as Doctor Zhivago and The Gulag Archipelago. I have never read these books but based on what I think of Life and Fate these must be truly remarkable books with such high praise. She also includes a historical background that is followed by a one page explanation of the translation by Robert Chandler. We also have a page that lists a few books on Stalin's Russia and Grossman himself. There is also a List of Chief Characters at the back of the book to aid the reader who may not be used to the complicated Russian names. I found this a great resource and referred to it constantly. As time went on the names became familiar.

The story itself revolves around the Shaposhnikova family and those that come into contact with them in one way or another. Dare I say it without seeming trite but almost a six degrees of separation story? This lead to the reader following the lives of everyone within that circle from those that fought and died to those that had issues with the state politics of the time. With that we became involved in an emotional rollercoaster be that the death of a son through to the agony of being untrue to one's self belief. All this told with emotionally charged prose by Grossman that left me as the reader spellbound. Some chapters were so astonishingly emotionally charged I was putting the book down to take stock. The mother whose son had been killed was sad beyond belief but the final thoughts of those going to their deaths in the gas chamber in chapter 48 part two will live with me forever.

A truly stunning book.

Brilliant. An anti war novel for the ages.

Once upon a time all history was environmental history.

That is the first line of this well told audio by the author Sunil Amrith. I would have thought all history is environmental, even that in the making.

The author discussed many events that I have read about in some depth. The Mongol invasions for example, but I had not read discussions previously as to the changing of the land from grazing to crop production. The discussion on the Little Ice age and the possible cause being the conquest of the South American continent by the Spanish I had read about. The discussion on Nipah virus in Malaysia was interesting as it was linked, in terms of propagation, to the Hendra Virus that occurred in Brisbane in the early 2010s. Hendra caused the death of 4 people and 83 horses. Nipah bought on the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of pigs and the deaths of over 100 people. The cause? Flying Fox having to move from their natural environment due to deforestation. As a species, we change our environment at our peril.

Recommended to those with an interest in the subject.

The 2nd Volume of Peter Pinney's WW2 trilogy follows Johnno to Bougainville Island.

Pinney has shown what a fine writer he is with this 2nd novel. Johnno's observations are sharper, he has honed his skills from the days of his secret diary in the New Guinea campaign. While others come back from the line and play up, getting drunk, raiding and trading for contraband, Johnno is “..... always bloody writing“ a young comrade states, annoyed that he will not go on a raid to steal an officers liquor with his mates. Johnno though is also sensible enough not to seem too big for his boots by occasionally joining in the fun. He is changing. The racist language of the New Guinea campaign is still heavy in his speech but his observations of the peoples of Bougainville Island are now of a more curious nature.
He even contemplates the human nature of the Japanese enemy. At one point a fellow digger, Silver, confides in Johnno his love of art and his own talent. Silver states of the Japanese that they are “....extraordinary artists” with the “...discovery of real beauty a goal in itself”. Johnno writes that it was “...strangely disturbing, the compassion in his voice; as if he was inviting us to consider something which, we instinctively knew, was best ignored”

Though there are lots of patrols the enemy is rarely met and this leaves the troops frustrated. Discipline is poor. Rumours run rife; Western Australia is going to be invaded! They are fighting in a “second rate show” one of their officers confides at one point. Philosophical discussions on killing become part of the banter. For some it is the best time of their lives but for others? It hits the men hard when a newspaper from home is received and the public know that Bougainville Island campaign is but a sideshow.

The Barbarians was always going to be a hard act to follow but Pinney has done more than enough to make this a must read for anyone wishing to read his prose. Again rich in Strine and observation of the Australian soldier at war but this time on Bougainville Island, an even less known theatre of war than was the previous novels settings in Papua New Guinea. This is Johnno's (Pinney's) observations of his own “limited experience” but as he states in the preface “An attempt has been made to eliminate factual error, but bias and prejudice remain,....” “This book is in no sense a unit history, nor is it meant to be. If it gives even a marginal notion of men on Bougainville, it will have served its purpose” It's purpose has been served with this reader. Superb!

Read years back. As usual man's inhumanity to man never ceases to amaze.