"Passing with sweeping momentum from world historical events to the smallest details of private life, Grosmann's nervous and inexhaustibly human writing gives each page the brilliance of a masterpiece."
("The Independent")

"The real subject of the book is the daily struggle of the human spirit with the horror of war and totalitarianism - fascist or communist. Its pages are filled with terrible scenes of inhumanity, presented in a stunningly sharp way. If it were possible to condense the theme into one word - which is probably impossible in such a rich work - that word would be 'freedom'. Life and Fate is a novel about the meaning of freedom."
("The Guardian")

"War and Peace" of the 20th century - a book about the grandeur and tragedy of human existence - one of the greatest novels of the 20th century - an epic in which world historical events are as important as the details of everyday life - a psychological, lyrical, journalistic, reflective, political, social, and philosophical work... but above all a truly popular novel about hopes, love, hatred, pain, and death.

From the German Extermination Camps to the Soviet Labor Camps and from the burning ruins of Stalingrad to the interrogation offices of post-war Moscow, amidst shocking descriptions of battles, tender love scenes, desperate survival efforts, and futile hopes of salvation that captivate the reader, Vasily Grossman tries to find the answer to the simplest - and eternal - question: Why do people enslave, humiliate, and annihilate other people, when they all have the same thirst for freedom and happiness?

The stunning epic "Life and Fate" was confiscated in 1961 by the KGB, as according to the leader of the "de-Stalinization" Nikita Khrushchev, it was nothing more than another nuclear warhead aimed at the Soviet Union. It took 52 whole years from the confiscation of the manuscript for it to be "liberated" in July 2013, when the head of the FSB (formerly KGB) handed it over to the State Literary Archives of Russia.