Volume 41, Number 18 · November 3, 1994
War Without Peace
By John Banville
Generations of Winter
by Vassily Aksyonov, translated by John Glad, translated by Christopher Morris
Random House, 592 pp., $25.00
In Generations of Winter Vassily Aksyonov has set out bravely, one might even say brazenly, to write a twentieth-century War and Peace, mingling fictional and historical characters in a great sprawling saga tracing the history of the Soviet Union. This first volume runs from 1925 to 1945; a second volume brings the story into the post-war era. The surprise is that he has succeeded to a remarkable degree. To predict at this point that his novel will prove as enduring as Tolstoy's classic is, of course, impossible. There is a certain coarseness in Aksyonov's literary manner which can be apt, certainly, for the task at hand—has there ever been a coarser place than Stalin's Russia?—but the book's sturdy, carpentered quality at times seems too clumsy to bear comparison with Tolstoy's exquisitely balanced artistic effects. All the same, Aksyonov's energy, inventiveness, and insouciance have resulted in what is surely a major document of our times, and one with lasting power.
Review, 3335 words
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