Dust and ashes

In his long-awaited novel Dust and Ashes, Anatoli Rybakov boldly brings to life the seminal event of the modern era - World War II - from the Russian perspective. As Stalin and Hitler clash, Red Army tanks advance, and the struggle that changed the course of the twentieth century plays out on the battlefields, Rybakov brings his epic story of the Soviet experience to its spectacular conclusion. Heralded by critics as a twentieth-century Tolstoy, Anatoli Rybakov won international acclaim in 1988 as the first Soviet novelist to describe - with shocking candor and poignancy - life under Stalin's…