The Russian TV series based on Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate, the greatest Russian novel of XX century, begins today at 21:25 Moscow time (GMT+3).
Rossiya 1 channel online is here, click on the red button Прямой эфир to switch to online TV.
This is the first screen version of the novel that was 'arrested' by the KGB in 1961 — all copies were confiscated, carbon paper and type-writer ribbons too. A communist party boss promised that the book will not be published for another 200 years.
A friend of Grossman saved one copy and hid it in a shoulder bag at his dacha. In the 70s it was smuggled out on microfilm. The English translation of the novel by Robert Chandler's was published in 1985. A few years later it came out in Russia during Gorbachev's glasnost.
But it was only in 2000s when Grossman's incredible epic started slowly gaining recognition. A year ago the BBC ran a week-long radio play based on Life and Fate.
The film is available on YouTube —
This is the first screen version of the novel that was 'arrested' by the KGB in 1961 — all copies were confiscated, carbon paper and type-writer ribbons too. A communist party boss promised that the book will not be published for another 200 years.
A friend of Grossman saved one copy and hid it in a shoulder bag at his dacha. In the 70s it was smuggled out on microfilm. The English translation of the novel by Robert Chandler's was published in 1985. A few years later it came out in Russia during Gorbachev's glasnost.
But it was only in 2000s when Grossman's incredible epic started slowly gaining recognition. A year ago the BBC ran a week-long radio play based on Life and Fate.
The film is available on YouTube —
2 comments:
My favorite book of all time LIFE AND FATE is now a very respectable Russian television mini-series. I wish I knew who got this done just to thank and congratulate them.
Thank you for your comment. I must say that I didn't like the Russian TV version at all. It is emasculated of all power of the original novel, dialogues changed, no nazis vs bolshevik comparisons, no GULAG vs concentration camps.
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