Life and Fate - Vasilii Grossman

“There is nothing more difficult than to be the stepson of the time. Time loves only those it has given birth to itself: its own children, its own heroes, its own labourers. Never can it come to love the children of a past age, any more than a woman can come to love the heroes of a past age, or a stepmother love the children of another woman.” These words might have seemed, around 1950, to have no application at all to Vasily Grossman, who wrote them. Then he would have appeared to be very much a direct and cherished child of his time, however monstrous that time might have been and however ... more