Wassili Grossman war ein russischer Schriftsteller, der für seine eindringlichen Darstellungen des Zweiten Weltkriegs und seiner menschlichen Kosten bekannt ist. Seine Berichterstattung von der Front und seine Romane, die aus direkter Kriegserfahrung geschöpft sind, zeichnen sich durch rohen Realismus und ein tiefes Verständnis für Leid aus. Grossmans Werk ist ein erschütterndes Zeugnis für die Gräueltaten des 20. Jahrhunderts und feiert gleichzeitig die Widerstandsfähigkeit des menschlichen Geistes angesichts unvorstellbarer Brutalität. Sein Schreiben befasst sich mit moralischen Komplexen und der Suche nach Menschlichkeit unter den düstersten Umständen.
Die Reise des großen russischen Schriftstellers an die Ränder des Imperiums
Im Jahr 1961 reist Wassili Grossman nach Jerewan und reflektiert über seine Erfahrungen und die Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. In seinen Reisenotizen zeigt er sich als humorvoller und bescheidener Denker. Die Armenische Reise vereint Bekenntnisse, Essays und Anekdoten und spiegelt die komplexe Geschichte Armeniens wider.
"Suppressed by the KGB and years later smuggled out of the Soviet Union to be published, Vasily Grossman?s novel is an unsparing story of ordinary Russians tragically caught between the fascism of the invading Nazis and the oppression of their own Soviet government. The sprawling plot follows the travails of the extended family of Viktor Shtrum along the vast eastern front of the war. Shtrum is a brilliant nuclear physicist who faces rising anti-Semitism in Moscow while his relatives navigate the threat of camps and prisons on both the Soviet and the Nazi sides. Grossman?s extensive wartime reporting, combined with his Tolstoyan narrative skills, allow him to portray with unprecedented detail and authenticity the human cost of the struggle between two freedom-denying powers. In vividly rendered scenes that range from the dramatic battle of Stalingrad to the remote Siberian gulag, and encompassing characters ranging from a grieving mother to a woman in love and from a six-year-old boy on the way to a gas chamber to Stalin and Hitler, Grossman?s masterpiece is a profound and moving reckoning with the darkness of the twentieth century and a testament to the stubborn persistence of kindness and hope."--Publisher
Vasily Grossman wrote three novels about the Second World War, each offering a distinct take on what a war novel can be, and each extraordinary. A common set of characters links Stalingrad and Life and Fate, but Stalingrad is not only a moving and exciting story of desperate defense and the turning tide of war, but also a monumental memorial for the countless war dead. Life and Fate, by contrast, is a work of moral and political philosophy as well as a novel, and the deep question it explores is whether or not it is possible to behave ethically in the face of overwhelming violence. The People Immortal is something else entirely. Set during the catastrophic first months of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, this is the tale of an army battalion dispatched to slow the advancing enemy at any cost, with encirclement and annihilation its promised end. A rousing story of resistance, The People Immortal is the novel as weapon in hand.
Journalistieke beschrijving van wat zich afspeelde aan het oostfront in de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
«Il libro segue con ottocentesca, tolstojana generosità molteplici destini individuali spostandosi da Stalingrado (città doppia: simbolo di difesa e libertà contro la violenza nazista e insieme luogo-emblema dell’Urss staliniana; solo nella “casa di Grekov” si vive secondo onore e senza gerarchie) ai lager sovietici e ai mattatoi nazisti, da Mosca (le stanze del potere, le celle della Lubjanka) alla provincia russa. E raccontando la “crudele verità” della guerra, le storie intrecciate di eroi e traditori, automi di partito ed esseri pensanti, delatori, burocrati, intriganti, carnefici, martiri, personaggi fittizi e reali, inframmezzando la narrazione con numerosi dialoghi (di ascendenza, questi, dostoevskiana), Grossman continua a interrogarsi sull’essenza di sistemi che uccidono la realtà – di conseguenza anche gli uomini – falsificandola, sostituendola con l’Idea. Al posticcio e menzognero “bene” di Stato lo scrittore può opporre soltanto, per quanto ardua e apparentemente impossibile in tempi disumani, la bontà individuale, rivendicando – sommessamente, ma con tenacia – l’irripetibilità del singolo destino umano. Giacché “Ciò che è vivo non ha copie ... E dove la violenza cerca di cancellare varietà e differenze, la vita si spegne”». Serena Vitale
The collected shorter works by the author of Life and Fate and Everything Flows, published in English for the first time.
Von der Kunstkammer zu den Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin, (2010). 286 S., Pbd. mit Lesebndchen, quart - neuwertig -
Vom Staunen über das Glück, am Leben zu sein.
