Had not heard of this book but is sure sounds like a great way to bundle up and read during our ice age New Year week. 600 pages would take the week...
Generations of Winter by Vasily Aksyonov
Compared by critics across the country to War and Peace for its memorable characters and sweep, and to Dr. Zhivago for its portrayal of Stalin's Russia, Generations of Winter is the romantic saga of the Gradov family from 1925 to 1945. "A long, lavish plunge into another world."--USA Today.
Comparisons to War and Peace are apt; this family saga doesn't disappoint. Aksyonov manages to capture historical sweep while still creating truly memorable characters. Deserves a much wider readership.
Vassily Aksynov’s Generations of Winter, a book which the Washington Post described as “the great Russian novel, the 20th century equivalent of War and Peace.” All I can say is that the Washington Post needs to get out more; it needs to wander down the highways and byways of Russian literature.
A book conceived on a monumental scale, one which tackles Russian history head on, a slice of the twentieth century, from the tranquil mid-1920s, a period of relative liberalisation, through the dark 1930s, the time of Stalin’s Great Purge, on to the Second World War. It follows the fortunes of the Gradov family, in happiness and in sorrow; and when it comes to sorrow no other nation quite matches Russia. It follows the fate of Boris Gradov, a leading Soviet doctor, and his children – Nikita, a soldier, Nina, a poet, and Kirill, an idealist. It follows, in turn, the fate of their children.
The author should know whereof he speaks. Both his parents were arrested at the height of Stalin’s terror when he was not quite five years old. His mother was Eugenia Ginzburg, herself a writer, who spent years in the concentration camps of Kolyma and in Siberian exile, recording her experiences in Journey into the Whirlwind and Within the Whirlwind. Aksynov, who did not see her again until he was sixteen, was sent to a state orphanage, another kind of gulag, a death sentence for so many children, from which he was rescued by his uncle.
Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont says, I read this book, a surprise gift, over the Christmas holiday and found myself beguiled, my various criticisms notwithstanding. This is living history, history mediated through the eyes of real people, who when they are not real are fictions! I followed the Gradovs and their various fates, never wholly losing interest, though from time to time losing sight of some members of the family.
It’s an honest narrative of dishonest times. I remember an observation from Doctor Zhivago, where a character says that the personal life was dead in Russia, that it had been killed by history. There must have been many families like the Gradovs, real people, people who maintained decent standards in the midst of indecency, who did their best to retain something of the personal life; who ensured, even in the most trying of circumstances, that they would not be drowned by the tides of time. For these generations Generations of Winter stands as a worthy testimony.
