In Stalingrad, Grossman transforms his reportage into a work of lyrical art and fierce power. His dispatches – written with unusual clarity and honesty – made him famous. There, he interviewed soldiers and generals, snipers and women medical orderlies. He narrowly escaped capture as Hitler’s divisions headed remorselessly east, and spent four months on the Stalingrad frontline. Grossman worked for nearly three years as a Soviet war correspondent. There, Soviet and German troops are engaged in a pitiless urban battle that Grossman calls “more grinding, more relentless than Thermopylae or even the Siege of Troy”. The story ends with Krymov crossing the Volga under fire. They include the physicist Viktor Shtrum and political commissar Nikolay Krymov, whose experiences are close to Grossman’s own. In Stalingrad, Grossman transforms his reportage into a work of lyrical art and fierce power
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