Life and Fate
I have a growing sense of urgency to understand the totalitarian. Not just in the lazy slander of comment sections, but in its historical specificity.
Hannah Arendt lingers on my next-up list. Books of intimidating length and content glower at me as I reach for others ahead of them.
I wanted an easy entry point, and despite its gravity, Life and Fate offered one. I’d read Stalingrad a while back but had forgotten most of the cast, encountering them afresh.
It captured the feeling of being caught in a vice: on one side, totalitarian German fascism driving toward the Volga; on the other, rigid, paranoid, and suffocating Soviet rule.
There were striking scenes - in Stalingrad, physics institutes, everyday homes. The size of the cast and my poor grasp of Russian naming conventions made for a book to wade through at times.
Between the tightening walls of history, Grossman focuses conspicuously on the domestic, small and interpersonal moments. Perhaps this is truer to most experience of them. World-historic events glimpsed from a kitchen table or a window up the street
Small kindnesses and care appear myriad, and despite their times. The cruelties - the ghettos, political prisons, anti-semitism, brutalities of war, opportunism, treatment of women - a mix; product of their times but often remaining a choice of those who carry it out.
I think Grossman must have had a faith of those human acts, even when the larger organising principles and moral character of it’s supporters fail around them.
After "Life and Fate" I read: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Before "Life and Fate" I read: How to Survive a Crisis: Lessons in Resilience and avoiding disaster