As eloquent a memorial to the anonymous little man in the Stalinist state as <i>Dr Zhivago</i> is to the artistic spirit in post-Czarist Russia and <i>The First Circle</i> to the scientific intelligentsia
New York Times
<b>Vasily Grossman is the Tolstoy of the USSR</b><b></b>
Martin Amis
Possibly the greatest chronicler of the second world war
Guardian
Only Dante, in his account of Ugolino and his sons starving to death in a locked tower, has written of death from hunger with equal power
- Robert Chandler, London Review of Books
Supplies a wealth of information about the social context and Soviet terminology
- Christopher Taylor, Guardian