Grossman, Vasilii Semenovich

Zhizn' i sud'ba [Life and Fate]

Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 1980. Item #1497

607 pages. Softcover, 210 × 136 mm. Printed from microfiches smuggled from the USSR. In publisher’s printed wrappers with black and red lettering to front and spine. With minor shelf wear to edges, light toning to the spine, and binding sound.

The first edition of [Life and Fate], the suppressed magnum opus of Soviet-Jewish author Vasilii Grossman (1905–1964), is a searing, panoramic novel of the Second World War.

Set during the Battle of Stalingrad, the novel follows physicist Viktor Shtrum and members of his extended family, charting their fates through war, repression, and moral reckoning. Grossman draws philosophical parallels between Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism, posing deep questions about freedom, individual responsibility, and the endurance of human dignity under tyranny.

The novel’s title directly references Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Grossman’s ambition was to craft a Soviet-era epic in the same literary tradition. The manuscript was confiscated by the KGB in 1961; Grossman died shortly thereafter. It was not until 1980, with this clandestine Swiss publication, that Life and Fate was made available to the public.

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