The brutal yet understated irony that the evil of soviet oppression and the evil of Nazi oppression bend to become just two more superimposable chapters of human inhumanity should not be lost (Grossman never lived to see Life and Fate published, much less to read Alan Bullock’s monumental Hitler and Stalin, but it makes a similar point). The dreadful carnage and the equally dreadful ennui of fields of battle, the desperate sexual encounters, the ghastly dehumanizing bastardry of war should all be compulsory reading for every thinking human being, pacifist or militarist, left or right or in between. The death of a child in a Nazi gas oven is as chilling, yet haunting beautiful a piece of writing as I have encountered.
The fog was at times intense, and the List of Chief Characters at the back of the book is woefully inadequate (page references would have redeemed it), but as I journeyed I was taken into the depths of human vulnerability. Russian patronymics, given names and surnames congeal in a bewildering cobweb of syllables, and I have long learned that it is best simply to allow the identity of the character slowly and imperfectly to dawn on this reader’s consciousness.So, armed with the memory of conquering a few Russian tomes, I journeyed on. And, while it appears Grossman was deliberately emulating that other great Russian tome War and Peace, on which I cannot comment, I can say that the experience of reading Karamazov and indeed of reading Crime and Punishment a few times prepared me for the sheer enormity of scratching around the Russian nomenclature. The Brothers Karamazov is as inspirational a read as I have even encountered. Alright: I shall name one, because it prepared me and inspired me to keep going with Life and Fate. Yet always there was just at the very least a hint that this was not one of those novels in which the folding of a handkerchief would be the pinnacle of excitement.Fortunately I have consumed one or two mammoth tomes before – three (I won’t parade my egotism by naming names) rate as my all-time literary favourites.
There were moments in which the Himalayan hike seemed too much, and Vasily Grossman’s epic tome was fated to head off and join the three or four other (not necessarily long) volumes that have defeated me. More a sort of Himalayan hike with a growing monkey of determination on my back: I’ve bought it (actually I was given it, but why spoil a good story?) I’m bloody well going to finish it. Not, of course, in an ‘oh my goodness I cannot put this down’ sort of a scamper.
It took me eight months or more to read Life and Fate.
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