Vasilii Grossman, Mama

Robert Chandler (Queen Mary, University of London)

Ed. by Andrei Rogatchevski, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1989

Places

Russia (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story

Resources

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“Mama” was written in 1960 but first published only in 1989, in the volume

Neskol’ko pechal’nykh dnei

[A Few Sad Days]. Like Grossman’s other last stories, it is more laconic and more modernist than his two great Stalingrad novels,

Za pravoe delo

(For a Just Cause [English translation titled “Stalingrad”]) and

Zhizn’ i sud’ba

[Life and Fate]. In

Life and Fate

Grossman spells out his thoughts very clearly indeed and is not afraid to repeat them; in his last stories he often only hints at them. If

Life and Fate

is comparable to a Shostakovich symphony, these stories are more like his quartets.

Like much of Grossman’s fiction, “Mama” has its roots in real life; it is based on the true story of an orphaned girl adopted in the early 1930s by Nikolai Yezhov and his wife

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2941 words

Citation: Chandler, Robert. "Mama". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 December 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35779, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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