Stalingrad

In April 1942, Hitler and Mussolini plan the huge offensive on the Eastern Front that will culminate in the greatest battle in human history. "A gripping panorama of the human experience" (Kenneth Branagh).

"You will not only discover that you love his characters and want to stay with them - that you need them in your life as much as you need your own family and loved ones - but that at the end... you will want to read it again."  -  Daily Telegraph

Hundreds of miles away, Pyotr Vavilov receives his call-up papers and spends a final night with his wife and children in the hut that is his home. As war approaches, the Shaposhnikov family gathers for a meal: despite her age, Alexandra will soon become a refugee; Tolya will enlist in the reserves; Vera, a nurse, will fall in love with a wounded pilot; and Viktor Shtrum will receive a letter from his doomed mother who will haunt him forever. 

The war will consume the lives of a huge cast of characters - lives that express Grossman's grand themes of the nation and the individual, nature's beauty and war's cruelty, love and separation. 

Stalingrad is a magnificent novel not only of war but of all human life: its subjects are mothers and daughters, husbands and brothers, generals, nurses, political officers, steelworkers, and tractor girls. It is tender, epic, and a testament to the power of the human spirit.