“Every brave man is brave in his own way.” #vasilygrossman #fromthefrontline #20BOS26 Book 17

Back in 2013 I read my first Vasily Grossman book, “An Armenian Sketchbook”, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, and was bowled over by his writing. I commented at the time that I had one of his best-known works “Life and Fate” on Mount TBR and that I should get to it soon…. Ahem… We are now 13 years later and although I’d amassed more of Grossman’s works during that period, I still hadn’t read anything else. However, I was excited when unexpected book post arrived recently in the form of a gorgeous hardback edition of a new Grossman work, “From the Front Line”; subtitled inside ‘Stalingrad – Treblinka – Berlin 1941-1945’, and also translated by the Chandlers; it’s a remarkable collection of the author’s war journalism and it makes powerful reading. Grossman was a prolific writer, and during the four years that the Soviet Union was fighting with the Allies against the Axis Powers, he was at the front line sending back reports for the ‘Red Star’ newspaper. In all, he produced…