Life and Fate Read Along, Part 2 Chapter 9

This post, covering Part 2, Chapter 9 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 we finally get an update on Dmitry Shaposhnikov. At this point, you might be thinking: is there really another Shaposhnikov I’ve been missing this entire time? But, as the chapter outlines, he has spent years in a Soviet prison camp. Any mentions of Dmitry so far have been indirect and in hushed voices.

During the conversation Nadya, who parrots some points that Viktor made previously about Stalin endorsing the prison camps, is scolded by Viktor: “He flew into a sudden rage - the rage of a man who senses that someone else knows his hidden weaknesses,” (p. 366).