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A Writer at War - Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945 (2006)
Front Cover Book Details
Genre Non-Fiction
Subject Grossman, Vasilii? Semenovich.; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945 - Destruction and pillage; World War, 1939-1945 - Personal narratives, Soviet
Publication Date 1/10/2006
Format Hardcover (9.4 x 6.2 mm)
Publisher Pantheon
Language English
Extras Dust Jacket; Dust Jacket Cover
Description
Edited and translated from the Russian by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova Knopf Canada is proud to present a masterpiece of the Second World War, never before published in English, from one of the great Russian writers of the 20th century – a vivid eyewitness account of the Eastern Front and “the ruthless truth of war.”

When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, Vasily Grossman became a special correspondent for the Red Star, the Red Army’s newspaper. A Writer at War – based on the notebooks in which Grossman gathered raw material for his articles – depicts the crushing conditions on the Eastern Front, and the lives and deaths of soldiers and civilians alike. It also includes some of the earliest reportage on the Holocaust. In the three years he spent on assignment, Grossman witnessed some of the most savage fighting of the war: the appalling defeats of the Red Army, the brutal street fighting in Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk (the largest tank engagement in history), the defense of Moscow, the battles in Ukraine and much more.

Historian Antony Beevor has taken Grossman’s raw notebooks, and fashioned them into a narrative providing one of the most even-handed descriptions – at once unflinching and sensitive – we have ever had of what he called “the ruthless truth of war.”
Personal Details
Store Black & Read
Purchase Price $6.00
Acquire Date 9/5/2009
Rating 0
Links Library of Congress
Product Details
LoC Classification D764.G772 2005
Dewey 940.54/217/092
ISBN 0375424075
Edition 1st American ed.
Cover Price $27.50
No. of Pages 400
First Edition No
Rare No
Notes/Review
Goodreads lists Grossman as the author of this book, but that's not really true. Antony Beever wrote it. He went through Grossman's notebooks from the war, mixed in some ling excerpts from his Red Star articles and added some connecting text that tells us where Grossman was and what was going on around him.

Grossman was politically naive. He made many notes that, if found, could have put him in the Gulag or the grave. He seemed to think that when the Nazis were defeated, Stalinism would grow softer. He often didn't see the anti-semitism in the Soviet Union. In spite of this, he was a keen observer of people.

Now I'm going to have to track down a copy of Grossman's Life and Fate.