Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics) by Vasily Grossman is an epic tale of World War II and a profound reckoning with the dark forces that dominated the twentieth century. Interweaving a transfixing account of the battle of Stalingrad with the story of a single middle-class family, the Shaposhnikovs, scattered by fortune from Germany to Siberia, Grossman fashions an immense, intricately detailed tapestry depicting a time of almost unimaginable horror and even stranger hope. This novel of unsparing realism and visionary moral intensity is one of the supreme achievements of modern Russian literature.

Life and Fate juxtaposes bedrooms and snipers’ nests, scientific laboratories and the Gulag, taking us deep into the hearts and minds of characters ranging from a boy on his way to the gas chambers to Hitler and Stalin themselves. The book was judged so dangerous in the Soviet Union that not only the manuscript but the ribbons on which it had been typed were confiscated by the state. Published by NYRB Classics, this edition contains 896 pages and carries the ISBN-10: 1590172019 and ISBN-13: 978-1590172018. It was released on May 16, 2006, with dimensions of 5.23 x 1.78 x 7.99 inches.