Life and Fate

Life and Fate? What a pretentious title. How can any one book cover such grandiose concepts?

I assure you, though, that Grossman's book lives up to the title with flying colors. I read literature to answer the question: “What does it mean to be human?” Literature provides readers with new experiences, from which readers can understand this question a little more. Life and Fate answers this question better than Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and, most importantly, Tolstoy, without a doubt. Sure, Grossman is grim, and Life and Fate can really weigh on readers. But it truly is better than the classic, great Russian novels. It captures the spirits of the times very well. From the gulags of Siberia to the ruins of Stalingrad, it's life in a book.

Still, I cannot recommend this book to everyone. You need a basic understanding of the early Soviet Union to be able to really understand things. Just to list a bunch of historical happenings that came up in chronological order: the Russian Revolutions (of course); the Russian Civil War and the Whites; New Economic Policy under Lenin; Lenin's death and his Testament against Stalin; collectivization, dekulakization, and the famine of 1929; the industrialization of the 1930s; the Great Purge of 1937; and finally, a simple understanding of the course of World War II. If that wasn't already enough, you should know the names of Yezhov, Beria, Malenkov, Himmler, Paulus, Zhukov, and Chuykov. This book is for a specific audience, and I can say for certain that Life and Fate cannot find popularity in a general audience. I'd say this book is more for those interested in history rather than those interested in literature generally.