I particularly enjoyed Vasily Grossman's writings on Stalingrad and "The Hell Called Treblinka." His descriptions of both events and the soldiers themselves, with strong Soviet prose but with humanistic detail, were fantastic to read. Absolutely worth a read to those interested in learning about the Red Army side of the war.

War is Hell

Just bits and pieces of his journal and letters. Quite a bit of repetition, both of his stories as well as the editors stating exactly what he's about to say. Stick with Beevor's Stalingrad.

A Writer at War is basically the notebooks that Vasily Grossman kept while he was a war correspondent with Krasnaya Zvezda, the Red Army newspaper, with occasional comments from the editors to help explain the army slang and Russian culture. Grossman was with the Red Army from about a year before Stalingrad to 1945, when the army rolled into Berlin...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.

Harrowing and as much a biography of the author at this period in his life. Very compelling.

4.5/5 rounded up

If scarcity increases value, Vasily Grossman's intimate accounts of war on the WWII's eastern front is invaluable to understanding the month to month experiences of the Soviet army. This book is chronologically structured from initial the Nazi hammer blows into Russia to the obliteration of Berlin. The editor is competent at giving context and synthesis between notebook entries, but Grossman is stellar at giving his accounts without framing his experiences through a Stalinist lens. Like so many of his generation, the author's notebooks on which the book is based went unpublished for decades. While the initial sixty pages appear disjointed, the book's following 3/4's are worth every second. The chapters centering on Stalingrad and Treblinka are particularly poignant.