From the Front line by Vasily Grossman

From the Front line by Vasily Grossman

"There are always good reasons for reading Grossman, but few times are as resonant as our own" Financial Times

"At the heart of his writing lies a tireless humanity and empathy" Telegraph

"Grossman combines a journalist's eye with a novelist's empathy" Spectator

"Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR" Martin Amis

June 22, 1941: Launch of Operation Barbarossa. Hitler invades the Soviet Union. Vasily Grossman soon begins a new career as a war reporter.

During the next four years, he covers all the major battles of the Eastern Front, from Stalingrad to Berlin, crafting brutally vivid reports that were read by millions of soldiers and civilians alike. And, as the war draws to a close, he was one of the first to expose the horrors of the Treblinka death camp.

Grossman had a remarkable memory and the ability to win the trust of men and women from all walks of life: snipers, generals, fighter pilots, peasants, soldiers in a Soviet penal battalion and German prisoners of war. And his ability to write so vividly, and with such understanding, about world-changing events while they were still unfolding may well be unique.

This collection brings together the best of the forty-nine articles he wrote for the Red Star newspaper, often in newly unearthed versions that have not been distorted by censors. It demonstrates more clearly than ever what an extraordinary amount Grossman witnessed during only a few years.

Translated from the Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
Introductory material, notes and editorial apparatus by Robert Chandler and Julia Volohova

VASILY SEMIONOVICH GROSSMAN (1905-1964) was born into a Jewish family in Berdichev, in what is now Ukraine. In 1934 he published both "In the Town of Berdichev" - a short story that won him immediate acclaim - and the novel Glückauf, about Donbas miners. During the Second World War, he worked as a reporter for the army newspaper Red Star; his "The Hell of Treblinka" (1944) was one of the first accounts of a Nazi death camp to be published in any language. His long novel Stalingrad was published in 1952. During the next few years Grossman worked on his second Stalingrad novel: Life and Fate. In February 1961, the KGB confiscated his typescript, but he was able to continue working on Everything Flows, which is yet more critical of the Soviet regime, until his last days. The short stories he wrote during his last three years are among his supreme achievements; English translations are included in The Road. Grossman died on 14 September 1964, on the eve of the twenty-third anniversary of the massacre of the Jews of Berdichev, in which his mother had died.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781529414691
ISBN 10	1529414695
Title	From the Front line
Author	Vasily Grossman
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Quercus Publishing
Year published	2026-06-18
Number of pages	512
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.