Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)

I myself chose to omit or abridge a small number of passages. Grossman never had the opportunity to revise the manuscript for publication and his style is occasionally repetitive. My hope was that these omissions, which amount to around six pages, would allow the clarity and power of Grossman’s thought to stand out more clearly. For this new (Vintage, 2006) edition of Life and Fate I have also corrected about a dozen minor errors and reinstated several phrases of Yiddish, which I had unthinkingly translated into English. Grossman’s occasional uses of Yiddish are, of course, significant.

Many people contributed to this translation, above all: my friend, Igor Golomstock; George Theiner and Hugh Lunghi, the editors in the early 1980s of Index on Censorship; my three editors at Harvill – Mark Bonham Carter, Carol O’Brien and Dan Franklin; Robin Leanse, who reworked two of the poems; Brigadier B.C. Elgood for help with military terminology; and Harry Willetts, who checked a draft of the entire translation against the original. I am grateful to Olive Classe, Frank Ellis (University of Leeds), Carol Garrard, Mark Miller, Harriet Murav, Alice Nakhimovsky, Daniel Rancour-Laferriere and several others for reading and commenting on this new introduction.