Vasily Grossman





Vasily Grossman

Author profile


born
in Berdychiv, former Russian Empire, Ukraine
December 12, 1905

died
September 14, 1964

gender
male

genre


About this author

русс: Василий Гроссман

Born Iosif Solomonovich Grossman into an emancipated Jewish family, he did not receive a traditional Jewish education. A Russian nanny turned his name Yossya into Russian Vasya (a diminutive of Vasily), which was accepted by the whole family. His father had social-democratic convictions and joined the Mensheviks. Young Vasily Grossman idealistically supported the Russian Revolution of 1917.

When the Great Patriotic War broke out in 1941, Grossman's mother was trapped in Berdichev by the invading German army, and eventually murdered together with 20,000 to 30,000 other Jews who did not evacuate Berdychiv. Grossman was exempt from military service, but volunteered for the front, where he spent more than 1,000 days. He bec...more


Average rating: 4.35 · 3,150 ratings · 434 reviews · 23 distinct works · Similar authors
Life And Fate
4.46 of 5 stars 4.46 avg rating — 1,849 ratings — published 1959 — 52 editions
A Writer at War: Vasily Gro...
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4.18 of 5 stars 4.18 avg rating — 619 ratings — published 2006 — 16 editions
Forever Flowing
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4.21 of 5 stars 4.21 avg rating — 434 ratings — published 1986 — 22 editions
The Road: Stories, Journali...
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4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 avg rating — 123 ratings — published 1987 — 7 editions
An Armenian Sketchbook
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4.17 of 5 stars 4.17 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 1965 — 2 editions
L'inferno di Treblinka
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4.22 of 5 stars 4.22 avg rating — 18 ratings — published 1944
Por una causa justa
4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 1952 — 5 editions
El libro negro
by
4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 1946 — 2 editions
Il bene sia con voi!
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4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1989 — 3 editions
Años de guerra
3.33 of 5 stars 3.33 avg rating — 6 ratings2 editions
More books by Vasily Grossman…
“Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.”
Vasily Grossman, Life And Fate

“I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never by conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.”
Vasily Grossman, Life And Fate

“In the cruel and terrible time in which our generation has been condemned to live on this earth, we must never make peace with evil. We must never become indifferent to others or undemanding of ourselves.”
Vasily Grossman

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