We think that the background to the book 'Life and Fate' is reason enough to want to pick up a copy. The author, Vasily Grossman, was a Jew born in Ukraine, in the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. He worked as a journalist during the Second World War, writing first hand accounts of battles, including Stalingrad. He also accounts from the Soviet discovery of Treblinka, a Nazi extermination camp.
Some of his books, including this one, were censored by the Soviets, and weren't released until after his death when they were smuggled out to be published in the West in 1980.
Fair warning. This book is fascinating, and absolutely worth a read. However, it is exactly as you think a book written by someone who lived through, and witnessed some of the worst bits of, the Second World War, and then, while living in the Soviet Union, wrote a book that is the best part of 1000 pages long. It's a good book. It is not a good time.
