The People Immortal
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The first war novel by the author of Life and Fate and a stunningly accurate portrayal of soldierly life written at the beginning of World War II.
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Grossman's insightful novel, originally published in 1942 before the linked WWII novels Life and Fate and Stalingrad, follows a Soviet battalion assigned a suicide mission in 1941: cover a Russian regiment's retreat from the unyielding Nazi advance for as long as they can. The doomed group is a rogue's gallery of Soviet archetypes. There's Bogariov, the battalion's levelheaded commissar, a peacetime professor of Marxism who is happy to test his convictions on the battlefield; Ignatiev, a cheery, rakish collective farm worker, whose boldness and knowledge of the land make him an invaluable guerrilla; and Cherednichenko, the steely, veteran divisional commissar looking to spin victory out of certain defeat. The text, which Grossman (1905–1964) wrote shortly after his own visit to the front as a war correspondent, hums with fine details: the leaves of dead birches hang "small and yellow like copper coins"; soldiers identify the fields they march over "by the swish of falling seeds, by the creak of straw underfoot and by the rustle of the stalks that clung to their tunics." Though straightforward and unmistakably propagandistic, it's elevated by Grossman's clarity of thought and vision. The result is a worthy look into Russian wartime psychology. Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated this book was part of a trilogy.
