Robert Chandler on translating Vasily Grossman

Robert Chandler spoke at Pushkin House last night on translating Vasily Grossman. There was discussion on why it took so long for Grossman to be recognised both in the west and in Russia. Opera director Irina Brown spoke movingly on how her friends in Russia say they can read Life and Fate once and only once, because they find its depiction of their former reality too searingly painful and hard to accept. and they are living with the legacy of that reality.

Thank God for those with the courage and talent to depict reality; every bit of denial-stripping opens a door to change.

I bought a copy of Chandler's translation of Everything Flows by Grossman, recently published by Harvill Secker.