Life and Fate Read Along, Part 2 Chapter 10

This post, covering Part 2, Chapter 10 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.

In this chapter Grossman, somewhat provocatively, presents the reader with a German soldier echoing many of the same concerns that are put forth on the Soviet side of the novel’s action.

Lieutenant Peter Bach, hospitalized with a slight and easily-operable wound, feels constantly uneasy that the doctors around him will report him for low morale. He thinks that he is “Disgusted at the sterility of the complex game he was playing, he took refuge in a game played by children - squeezing warm soapy water inside his clenched fist,” (p. 369).