Course Description

Instructors: Bert and Jill Parks A Magnificent Novel: An Epic of World War II and the Battle of Stalingrad. The class will be reading Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. This epic Russian novel is often compared to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It is a miracle that this novel survived the KBG’s attempts to destroy it in the 1950’s. Grossman focuses on several families scattered by fortune from Germany to Siberia and follows them through times of almost unimaginable horror and even stranger hope. It juxtaposes bedrooms and snipers’ nests, scientific laboratories and Gulag, taking us deep into the hearts and minds of its characters. Grossman turns an unshakable human gaze on the haggard face of war. This novel of unsparing realism and visionary moral intensity is one of the supreme achievements of modern Russian literature. This is a big book. Fasten your seat belts. Let’s get started now. The class will also include documentary footage of Vasily and the historical times in the Soviet Union.