From the Front Line: Stalingrad–Treblinka–Berlin, 1941–45

War reporting from one of Russia's greatest writers, an indispensable record of World War II and the Eastern Front.

June 22, 1941: Launch of Operation Barbarossa. Hitler invades the Soviet Union. Vasily Grossman soon begins a new career as a war reporter.
During the next four years, he covered all the major battles of the Eastern Front, from Stalingrad to Berlin, writing brutally vivid reports that were read by millions of soldiers and civilians alike. And as the war drew to a close, he was one of the first to expose the horrors of the Treblinka death camp.
Grossman had a remarkable memory and the ability to win the trust of men and women from all walks of life: snipers, generals, fighter pilots, peasants, soldiers in a Soviet penal battalion, and German prisoners of war. Not many reporters are able to write so vividly, and with such understanding, about world-changing events while they are still unfolding.
This collection brings together the best of the forty-nine articles Grossman wrote for the Red Star newspaper, many in newly unearthed versions that have not been distorted by censors. It is still a vital record of a deadly time.

About the Author :
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman (1905–1964) worked as a reporter for the army newspaper Red Star during WWII, covering nearly all of the most important battles from the defense of Moscow to the fall of Berlin. NYRB Classics publishes Grossman’s Stalingrad, Life and Fate, The Road, Everything Flows, An Armenian Sketchbook, and The People Immortal.

Robert Chandler’s translations from Russian include works by Alexander Pushkin, Teffi, Andrey Platonov, and Hamid Ismailov. He has also written a short biography of Pushkin and edited three anthologies of Russian literature for Penguin Classics. His most recent publication is a selection of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire and his Russian contemporary Velimir Khlebnikov.

Elizabeth Chandler is a co-translator, with her husband, of Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter; of Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad, Everything Flows, An Armenian Sketchbook, and The Road; and of several works by Andrey Platonov.

Julia Volohova is an independent scholar who has been researching the life and work of Vasily Grossman since 2014. Working in state and private archives, including Grossman's previously unstudied "family archive," she has played a central role in preparing scholarly, fully annotated editions of Grossman's work and has been responsible for the publication of several entirely unknown texts. Most recently, working with Anna Krasnikova, she has edited a substantial volume of Grossman's correspondence.

Review :
"Vasily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR." —Martin Amis

"For the Second World War, or Great Patriotic War as it is known in Russia, the most renowned writer is Vasily Grossman." —Tony Barber, Financial Times

"Grossman’s writing features sweeping, almost lyrical descriptions of landscapes ravaged by war . . . and vivid combat scenes that capture human frailty at the mercy of mechanized violence . . . It’s a powerful evocation of a world at war."
—Publishers Weekly