The most famous book I had never read.
This was also recommended to me by
Alison, and it's comparible, to Second-Hand
Time, parts of this, are so similar. It’s
true, and it’s fiction. It’s terrifying, one of
the most terrifying and emotional parts,
is the descriptions of the architecture of
the concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Somebody, designed those camps. In the
story, the architect described, it makes
me feel sick, there was an intensity, I
almost stopped reading this, through the
Holocaust, then Stalingrad, then straight
into the Moscow State Prison, where people
where being tortured using highly
sophisticated, and brutal, chumical and
physical torture techniques. I haven’t
spoken to Alison about this book, only
briefly, and it is reassuring to know another
human being has read it.

/

Life and Fate
Vassily Grossman
Translated by Robert Chandler
with an Introduction by Linda Grant
Vintage Books, London
2011