Andrew Roberts chose two NYRB Classics for his Five Best of “World War II First Hand Accounts” list in Saturday’s The Wall Street Journal. Both Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte and Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman are on the list.
On Kaputt, Roberts wrote “The Italian journalist Curzio Malaparte was sent to Russia by the newspaper Corriere della Sera to cover Hitler’s glorious victory over the Bolsheviks, but instead he witnessed the drawn-out Nazi defeat on the Eastern Front. He recorded what he had seen in an autobiographical novel, ‘Kaputt,’ which he had to keep hidden until after the war.” First published in the US in 1946, Kaputt was released by NYRB Classics in 2005.
On Life and Fate, “Taking extensive notes throughout the war, Grossman—a Jew who felt deeply betrayed by the Bolsheviks’ growing anti-Semitism— incorporated the stories into his monumental autobiographical novel, Life and Fate, which has been likened to War and Peace in its scope and ambition.” Confiscated by the KGB, Life and Fate was not published in the US until 1980 and joined the NYRB Classics series in 2006. Life and Fate is one of the series’ bestselling titles.
To read more about Andrew Roberts’ book picks, click here.
