What is most striking about Ivan is that, although he is so central to the plot, he is, as a character, almost non-existent. “The sea was not freedom it was a likeness of freedom, a symbol of freedom…How splendid freedom must be if a mere likeness of it, a mere reminder of it, is enough to fill a man with happiness.” The passing of Uncle Joe is significant, because it led to the overturning of many unsound convictions – including, in this instance, Ivan’s – and this, this acceptance by the State that people had been locked up, and murdered, on trumped up charges, meant that ordinary Russians had some uncomfortable truths to confront, not only about how their government had behaved but in terms of their own guilt or culpability also. The man tying these episodes together is Ivan Grigoryevich, who has just been released from prison following the death of Joseph Stalin. ‘I have no idea! He was just reading a book.’Īs one would expect of a book that only just breaches 200 pages, Everything Flows is much narrower in focus, and less epic and panoramic, than Grossman’s masterpiece it was, moreover, unfinished at the time of the author’s death, which perhaps accounts for how episodic it is.

I had visions, as I came to read Everything Flows, of being solemnly escorted out of the building, a broken man, my head resting on the ample bosom of a stout motherly woman…’what’s wrong with him?’ my colleagues will ask her. More than once – as I carried it around with me during the day, fitting in a few pages here and there – I made a fool of myself in public, especially at work, during breaks, sitting there damp about the eyes, with a pained expression on my face, and a lower lip starting to tremble. As I wrote in my review, Vasily Grossman’s Life & Fate is the only book I have ever snapped shut, not out of boredom or irritation or a desire to read something else, but out of fear, a fear of what I would be exposed to and how it would affect me. It was with trepidation that I picked this up.

Vasily grossman life and fate review