First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

Synopsis:

Life and Fate is fiction on the epic scale: powerful, deeply moving, and devastating in its depiction of a world torn apart by war and ideological tyranny. At the center of the novel, overshadowing the lives of each of its huge cast of characters, stands the battle of Stalingrad. Vasily Grossman presents a startlingly vivid picture of this desperate struggle for a ruined city, and of how the ebb and flow of the fighting affect the lives and destinies of people far from the front line. With Tolstoyan grandeur that finds room for intimate detail, and deploying a multitude of superbly realized characters, Grossman delivers a message of terrifying simplicity: that Stalinism and Nazism are one and the same in their falsehood, cruelty, and inhumanity.

Happy Friday, everyone! Thank goodness we all made it through the week! Technically, today is Sunday. So I guess, happy end of the weekend? I know, everyone is sad because tomorrow is the start of another workweek. It cannot be denied that only a handful of people like Mondays. I am certainly not one of them. Nevertheless, I hope everyone has had a restful weekend. I hope everyone was able to take a rest, complete their chores, or pursue their passions. I hope the weekend provided everyone a timely respite from the tediousness of life. I hope you were able to spend it with the people you love. I hope everyone was able to rejuvenate and find peace amid this pandemonium. I hope the weekend has prepared you for yet another battle ahead. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in body, mind, and spirit.

With the workweek coming to an end, it is time for a fresh, albeit a little bit late, First Impression Friday update. This bookish meme has become an essential component of my weekly book blogging. It is the perfect way to cap the blogging week, which allows me space to take a breather and process the book I am currently reading. In August – we are already halfway through the eighth month of the year – I continued my foray into the works of European writers, a literary journey I commenced in July. This pivot comes after spending the first half of the year reading the works of Asian writers, primarily East Asian writers. This pivot is also critical in my 2025 reading journey. I have several books written by European writers in my reading challenges; I realized that I have been lagging behind in these challenges. Among the books that are part of these challenges is my current read, Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate.

Before the pandemic, I had never heard of the Russian writer. Here is a bit of trivia: I have always thought of Grossman as German. Only upon reading the book’s introduction did it dawn on me that Grossman is Russian, born in Ukraine. Anyway, it was through an online bookseller that I came across him and Life and Fate. Always raring to explore worlds I haven’t before, I acquired the book. However, it was left to gather dust on my bookshelf, a fate it shared with several other books (HAHA). This was the primary reason for the book’s inclusion in my 2025 Top 25 Reading List. In the book’s introduction, I learned that Grossman was quite a prominent name in Soviet Russian literary circles. He also served as a war correspondent during the Second World War – this was after he was rejected for military service in 1941 – and was second in popularity only to Ilya Ehrenburg.

Originally published in 1980 as Жизнь и судьба (Zhizn’ i sud’ba), Life and Fate is the third and final book in Grossman’s The Stalingrad Trilogy. The novel transports the readers to the Second World War, during the Battle of Stalingrad, with the novel opening with the German army’s advance and the Soviet Union’s desperate defense. With chaos ensuing and even inevitable, we are introduced to a diverse cast of characters. Among the central characters are the members of the Shaposhnikov family who, in one capacity or another, were involved in the war effort. Some also played prominent roles in Russian society. Among the members of the family is Yevgenia (Zhenya) Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova. A dedicated Communist Party member, Yevgenia reconnected with her lover, Colonel Pyotr Pavlovich Novikov. After their reconnection, they retreated to Kuibyshev. However, she struggles to gain a residence permit through the local bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, we are also introduced to another family, the Shtrum family. The patriarch, Viktor Pavlovich, is a brilliant physicist married to Lyudmila (Lyuda) Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova, the older sister of Yevgenia. The couple has a daughter Nadya although Lyuda had a son, Tolya, from a previous marriage with Abarchuk. In light of the encroachment of the German forces, the Shtrums were moved from Kazan to Moscow. They are just among the many characters who populate the novel. This also means the novel has several plotlines; at nearly eight hundred pages, I don’t expect anything less. Aside from these two families, we read about the fate of the Russian soldiers at the frontline. Considering that Grossman is a Russian Jew, the novel also deals with the Holocaust. Viktor’s mother, for instance, was sent to a concentration camp.

Palpably, the novel explores the dynamics and complexities of Soviet politics. Soviet Communism is constructed against German Nazism. Populist ideologies also contrasted with fascism. The book was even the subject of censorship, dubbed as anti-Soviet. Grossman submitted the manuscripts to the editors of the journal Znamya. In February 1961, two KGB officers came to his home, carrying with them an order to confiscate the manuscript. The novel’s complicated history further underlines its heritage. While I am still in the first part of the novel, I have already been kept abreast of its significance. I have already surmised some of the subjects it grapples with; history and politics are prevalent.

The vast cast of characters and the various plotlines are reminiscent of Charles Dickens and his works, although the novel is compared with a Russian literary classic, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Life and Fate is even considered the War and Peace of the 20th century. I can understand why. With its heft, it will take me time to complete the book, but I am not in a hurry. The historical details are keeping me occupied. The novel also referenced several literary classics, such as Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. This adds nuance to the novel. I can’t wait to see how the story unfolds. I am expecting that there are philosophical intersections, considering that the Introduction mentioned how the book was Grossman’s reflections on history and philosophy. How about you, fellow reader? What book or books have you read over the weekend? I hope you get to enjoy whatever you are reading right now. Happy weekend!