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Radio 4,12 Sep 2011,45 mins

Vasily Grossman: his life and legacy

Start the Week

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Andrew Marr discusses the life and work of the writer Vasily Grossman in a special programme recorded at an event in Oxford to celebrate his greatest novel, Life and Fate. Grossman was a Ukrainian Jew who spent most of WWII reporting on the front line with a humanity and attention to detail that defied the Soviet censors. His masterpiece, Life and Fate, pitted communism against fascism but came down on the side of human kindness. Start the Week looks at the legacy of a writer who is largely ignored in his own country, and asks how Grossman's depiction of the war compares to the authorised version in Russia today. Andrew talks to the historian Antony Beevor, the writers Andrey Kurkov and Linda Grant.

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