Ebook: The road: stories, journalism, and essays

Review

"Grossman's unsparing, literary account of the horrific ways Nazi Germany implemented its ethnic-cleansing program at Treblinka was one of the first reports of a death camp anywhere in Europe and eventually provided prosecutors at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal with crucial background information. The surprise is that up until now and English-language translation of Grossman's lengthy article has never been published in its entirety. That will soon change with the publication of The Road, a collection of Grossman's best short stories and war-time articles, including 'The Hell of Treblinka.'" --Tobias Grey, The Wall Street Journal

Grossmans greatness is manifested in a constant ability to surprise his readers: where we lazily expect darkness and gloom, Grossman provides lightness and humour; what might seem at first glance to be narrow polemic turns out, when paid more attention, to have the grandeur of tragedy.David Lea,_The Literateur_

Vasily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR.Martin Amis

the collection is a treasure trove that lends the reader an insider's understanding of what it was like to live through the Soviet era, at the same time as it introduces us to Grossman's enduring preoccupation with the wonder and terror of humanity.A wonderful collection, this an introduction to the man and his times that also tells us much about his love, his pity and his faith. Gillian Slovo, _The Guardian
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Grossmans work excavates from the Soviet rubble vital artifacts of the bitter, the tragic, the self-sacrificing, the indomitable and, ultimately, the inspiring.. [_The Road_ is] a volume that is sensitive to Grossmans often lyrical language and frames each entry within its time through comprehensive notes. Ken Kalfus, The New York Times

[Grossmans] report The Hell of Treblinka was one of the first to report on an extermination camp, and was used as testimony in the Nuremberg trials. Treblinka is included in the recently published book, The Road an original collection of Grossmans short stories, essays, and letters translated into English for the first time. This collection serves as a fantastic view into the mans work, and will hopefully lead readers to seek out his two books of fiction put out a few years earlier. Jason Diamond, Jewcy

Soviet author Grossman volunteered for the army when the Germans invaded in 1941 and spent more than three years as a special correspondent at the front for the army newspaper Red Star. His wartime writing established him as a major "voice" of wara status resembling in many ways that of Ernie Pyle in AmericaGrossman was a perceptive observer with an eye for essential detail. His vignettes of the fighting at Kursk and the battles that brought the Red Army into Berlin are models of combat reporting, and the elegiac realism of his description of Treblinka merits wide anthologizing in Holocaust literature. _Publishers Weekly_

Product Description

The Road brings together short stories, journalism, essays, and letters by Vasily Grossman, the author of Life and Fate, providing new insight into the life and work of this extraordinary writer. The stories range from Grossmans first success, In the Town of Berdichev, a piercing reckoning with the cost of war, to such haunting later works as Mama, based on the life of a girl who was adopted at the height of the Great Terror by the head of the NKVD and packed off to an orphanage after her fathers downfall. The girl grows up struggling with the discovery that the parents she cherishes in memory are part of a collective nightmare that everyone else wishes to forget. The Road also includes the complete text of Grossmans harrowing report from Treblinka, one of the first anatomies of the workings of a death camp; The Sistine Madonna, a reflection on art and atrocity; as well as two heartbreaking letters that Grossman wrote to his mother after her death at the hands of the Nazis and carried with him for the rest of his life.

Meticulously edited and presented by Robert Chandler, The Road allows us to see one of the great figures of twentieth-century literature discovering his calling both as a writer and as a man.