Vasily Grossman

Grossman wrote a book called Life and Fate . It has been described as the ‘War & Peace’ of the 20th century. The book was largely unknown in the west until Anthony Beevor used it as one of his sources for Stalingrad. Grossman was there during the siege and some of his comments in the book caused it to be ‘arrested’ by the KGB. When he asked about getting it back he was told, ‘in about 200 years’. Luckily he kept a copy. The book has since been turned into a Russian language TV series.