Historian Catherine Merridale chronicles the tortuous journey of Vasily Grossman’s novel STALINGRAD to print. In 1945 there was a need & eager anticipation for a literary treatment of the Soviet people’s experience of a terrible war. A book that was the Red equal to Tolstoy’s War & Peace. By 1949 Grossman was ready, poised to deliver his epic version which he then called STALINGRAD.

He had produced a text of which he was justly proud. A book that was necessary and just. Despite signs of increasing censorship and repression he still believed his novel would find acceptance and a receptive audience. Yet he was canny enough to keep a personal diary of the process of submitting his manuscript-translated into English for the first time it reveals the beginnings of a maddening journey that became an epic battle of wills.

Reader: Anton Lesser
Producer: Mark Burman Show less