RITA DI SANTO assesses the winners of the most politically charged festival to date
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Towering tribute to the hero city
The novel Stalingrad is a magnificent account of the people who endured the battle which changed the course of WWII, says GORDON PARSONS
Bearing witness: Vasily Grossman in Stalingrad
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KATARZYNA KOSMALA introduces a retrospective by one of the most significant figures in contemporary US photography
MAYER WAKEFIELD is entertained but let down by an audacious production that, sadly, doesn't ring true
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by drama that, despite accomplished performances, cannot overcome an unfocused script
New releases from Sam Carter, Spell Songs and Les Thomas
Stalingrad
by Vasily Grossman
(Harvill Secker, £25)
THESE days, superlatives can be overused, resulting in truly great achievements being devalued.
Yet no-one can doubt that Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate deserves the highest accolade. So too with its prequel Stalingrad, now published for the first time in English.
There is evidence to suggest that this great Soviet writer intended the two works to be one monumental statement of humanity’s suffering and surviving the cataclysm of the second world war.
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JOE GILL marvels at the history of a highly complex nomadic and hunter/gatherer society without a hierarchical class system
GORDON PARSONS recommends an entertaining account of the years between Germany’s defeat in WWI and Hitler’s seizure of power
BRENT CUTLER is disappointed by a work of historical revisionism by a former US army officer, that makes a false equivalence between the two regimes
Hundreds in Berlin gathered on January 15 to honour the US-born socialist who made East Germany his home. Florentine Morales Sandoval reports