Life and Fate

Offering a broad portrait of an age and a searing vision of Stalinist Russia, this book is also the story of a family, the Shaposhnikovs, whose lives in the army, the gulag, a physics institute, a power station and a concentration camp are stunningly evoked, from their darkest to their most poetic moments. Life and Fate is an epic tale of twentieth-century Russia told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stalingrad.As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman's characters must work out their destinies in a world torn by ideological tyranny and war.Completed in 1960 and then confiscated by the KGB, this sweeping panorama of Soviet Society remained unpublished until it was smuggled into the West in 1980, where it was hailed as a masterpiece.'One of the finest Russian novels of the 20th century' Daily Telegraph'Compelling... Grossman's portrait is timelessly relevant... Life and Fate is worth all the audience it can find' The TimesVINTAGE CLASSICS RUSSIAN SERIES - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.