Ever-victorious life
In this vivid story set in war time Russia, a Communist officer is billeted in a humble household to give...
Lasting love, changing love
A touching description of how love can be constant and yet changing. This is a long standing and quietly happy...
Particles of human life
This week, glad to share fine metaphors both written by journalists. Here The Economist pays a suitably eloquent and moving tribute...
The apostle of freedom
Vasily Grossman sings freedom despite having lived in a time and place where it was desperately rare. Even one of...
An anatomy of anguish
This graphic and heart-rending typology of despair makes me conscious of having been mercifully spared much of anything that could...
Captain Grekov’s eyes
This is a memorable description of Captain Grekov, commander of House 6/1 in the rubble of Stalingrad, summing up so...
Putting everything right
Grossman's capacity to capture, with simplicity and delicacy, the nature and strength of love in many contexts is always touching. ...
The gift of our stories
Robert Chandler is a translator of one of my most admired tellers of human stories, Vasily Grossman. Grossman's skill lies...
Bright eyes like glass grapes
‘Bright eyes’ implies a warm, sparkling, engaging personality until you slam up against ‘rather like glass grapes’, and then you...
Mule meets Hamlet
Grossman has a wonderful capacity to imagine the minds and feelings of animals, and while chronicling the horrors of man's...
Of edible houses
A donkey nabbed by the Italian army in the Second World War finds himself in Abyssinia where, from his perspective,...
Of time and mind
A beautiful story about a Jewish school teacher in a town subjected to Nazi massacre. Rosenthal defends his right to...
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