Grossman’s great subject, in his fiction as well as his reportage, was the terrible nature of totalitarianism. His characters come from both sides of the battle and include a German lieutenant who crosses the Don River with his company in triumph but, by the end of the cycle, comes to understand the error of his ways. Toward the end of Stalin’s life, Grossman set to work on the pair of books that would recount what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. Improbably, Grossman survived the purges of the Stalin era even though the dictator’s gaze often fell on him. An extraordinary novel by war correspondent Grossman (1905-1964), completing, with Life and Fate, a two-volume Soviet-era rejoinder to War and Peace.
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