Life and Fate Signed First Edition Reference

Zhizn’ i sud’ba (Editions L’Age d’Homme, Lausanne, 1980; English: Harper & Row, 1985, translated by Robert Chandler) is Grossman’s epic novel of the Battle of Stalingrad and the moral catastrophe of totalitarianism. The novel parallels the Nazi and Soviet systems with a directness that made it unpublishable in the USSR — the KGB confiscated the manuscript, reportedly telling Grossman it could not be published for two hundred years.

First Edition Identification

Russian first: Editions L’Age d’Homme, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1980. Published from microfilm smuggled out of the USSR by Andrei Sakharov and others. English first: Harper & Row, 1985. Translated by Robert Chandler.

Market Values

Grossman died in 1964; signed copies of Life and Fate do not exist.

• English first (Harper & Row): $50–$150
• Russian first (L’Age d’Homme): $100–$300

The book’s extraordinary publication history — KGB confiscation, microfilm smuggling, posthumous foreign publication — makes every early edition historically significant.