Life and Fate Read Along, Part 1 Chapter 36

This post, covering Part 1, Chapter 36, is part of The Slavic Literature Pod’s chapter a day read along of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate. Learn more about our project here.

Today, Viktorov the story and Viktorov the man intersect. The narrator describes the pilot’s obsession with a nineteenth century story of love. Viktorov yearns to be a hero and recapture his lost love. Instead, he is wandering around a glade that he thinks even the Nazis wouldn’t bother bombing.

“At night Viktorov remembered the months he had spent in the hospital at Stalingrad. But he no longer remembered how his nightshirt had been damp with sweat, how the brackish water had made him feel sick, how the thick, heavy smell had tormented him. Those days in hospital now seemed a time of happiness,” (p. 160).