A letter in the dark
A desperate and yet hopeful act, this. People throwing letters out of trains taking them to the gulag, trusting that...
It’s New Year’s Day – call someone!
This made me laugh on the one hand – a funny image to receive a phone call from a dog...
How to strangle an author
The life and fate of Grossman's manuscript hung in the balance after being arrested by the authorities. He never knew...
Normality and absurdity
Grossman is a master of capturing tiny details that show something touchingly ordinary in an extraordinary setting. Here, modelled on...
Love among the rubble
This refers to a love affair that burgeons in the grimness of Stalingrad, and I like how Grossman expands the...
Like a burst of hope
A heartening simile in a vivid, gripping narrative of humans ground between the shifting tectonic plates of contradictory but equally...
Lasting love, changing love
A touching description of how love can be constant and yet changing. This is a long standing and quietly happy...
As ancient as …
As a simile for 'ancient' you could use a range of places and races, but here the intoning of the...
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...
The happiest time of life
Listening time: 3 minutes. A beautiful description of the sheer, unbounded joy of being alive in a...
The mule and the mare
Listening time: under 3 minutes
Grossman writes with great empathy of animals and their experiences. Here an...
A town destroyed
Few writers convey the horrors of war and oppression more unflinchingly than Vasily Grossman. Here he describes a town flattened...
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