The Road by Vasily Grossman
Vasily Grossman, the author of Life and Fate, collects his short stories, journalism, essays, and correspondence in The Road, offering fresh insight into his life and work. The tales range from Grossman’s first bestseller, “In the Town of Berdichev,” a searing examination of the price of war, to haunting later works like “Mama,” which is based on the life of a young girl who was taken in by the head of the NKVD during the height of the Great Terror and sent to an orphanage after her father was executed. The daughter struggles as she grows up learning that the parents she holds dear in memory are a part of a shared nightmare that everyone else would like to forget.
The Road by Vasily Grossman
11 used from $7.33
Free shipping
Amazon.com
The Sistine Madonna, a reflection on art and atrocity, as well as two wrenching letters that Grossman wrote to his mother after she died at the hands of the Nazis and carried with him for the rest of his life, are also included in The Road. It also includes the full text of Grossman’s harrowing report from Treblinka, one of the first analyses of the operations of a death camp.
Robert Chandler’s meticulous editing and presentation of The Road allows us to witness one of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century finding his calling as a writer and a man.
This anthology opens with straightforward tales from the 1930s before transitioning to tales from the Great Patriotic War and a very detailed account of the death camp. It was created not long after the camp was freed by the Soviet Army. It has put the murderers and their victims at the forefront so much.
The Road by Vasily Grossman serves as a reminder of a writer who invested his entire himself into his work and left behind a body of work that deserves as much attention as possible. I would also say that in large part because of the Chandlers’ editing and comments, this anthology stands on its own.
