The Road

Praise

“There are always many good reasons for reading Grossman, but few times are as resonant as our own. As a proud son of Ukraine, steeped in Russian culture, Grossman was both a chronicler of the Soviet Union’s greatest victories and a clear-eyed investigator of some of its darkest crimes. He would have understood better than most the split identities, divided loyalties and historical animosities that underlie the current conflict. Indeed, he embodied many of them. . . . As a victim, as much as a witness, of history, Grossman’s writings also tell us much about the tragic fate of Ukraine and its Jewish community, in particular. . . . It is as an insistent, truth-telling humanist that Grossman may have left his most lasting legacy. . . . even today, as we watch another brutal war ravaging the long-suffering people of Ukraine, it is striking how his spirit endures.” —John Thornhill, Financial Times

“Another superb translated work to appear [in 2010] was The Road, comprising Vasily Grossman’s short stories and journalism. Although occasionally tainted by propaganda, his stories – particularly the later ones – are extraordinary, punctuated with small details that stop the eyes and drag them back to read certain phrases again. — The Guardian

“Grossman’s unsparing, literary account of the horrific ways Nazi Germany implemented its ethnic-cleansing program at Treblinka was one of the first reports of a death camp anywhere in Europe and eventually provided prosecutors at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal with crucial background information. The surprise is that up until now and English-language translation of Grossman’s lengthy article has never been published in its entirety. That will soon change with the publication of The Road, a collection of Grossman’s best short stories and war-time articles, including ‘The Hell of Treblinka.'” –Tobias Grey, The Wall Street Journal

“Grossman’s greatness is manifested in a constant ability to surprise his readers: where we lazily expect darkness and gloom, Grossman provides lightness and humour; what might seem at first glance to be narrow polemic turns out, when paid more attention, to have the grandeur of tragedy.” —David Lea, The Literateur

“Vasily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR.” —Martin Amis

“…the collection is a treasure trove that lends the reader an insider’s understanding of what it was like to live through the Soviet era, at the same time as it introduces us to Grossman’s enduring preoccupation with the wonder and terror of humanity.…A wonderful collection, this – an introduction to the man and his times that also tells us much about his love, his pity and his faith.” —Gillian Slovo, The Guardian

“Grossman’s work excavates from the Soviet rubble vital artifacts of the bitter, the tragic, the self-sacrificing, the indomitable and, ultimately, the inspiring….. [The Road is] a volume that is sensitive to Grossman’s often lyrical language and frames each entry within its time through comprehensive notes.” —Ken Kalfus, The New York Times
 
“[Grossman’s] report ‘The Hell of Treblinka’ was one of the first to report on an extermination camp, and was used as testimony in the Nuremberg trials. ‘Treblinka” is included in the recently published book, The Road — an original collection of Grossman’s short stories, essays, and letters translated into English for the first time…. This collection serves as a fantastic view into the man’s work, and will hopefully lead readers to seek out his two books of fiction put out a few years earlier.” —Jason Diamond, Jewcy


“Soviet author Grossman volunteered for the army when the Germans invaded in 1941 and spent more than three years as a special correspondent at the front for the army newspaper Red Star. His wartime writing established him as a major “voice” of war–a status resembling in many ways that of Ernie Pyle in America…Grossman was a perceptive observer with an eye for essential detail. His vignettes of the fighting at Kursk and the battles that brought the Red Army into Berlin are models of combat reporting, and the elegiac realism of his description of Treblinka merits wide anthologizing in Holocaust literature.” –Publishers Weekly