both ultimately restorative
smouldering upon a bed of mud and sand
of books and men and women
What causes them to give up
lost mines and abandoned hoards lie like magnets
An Armenian Sketchbook Philip Cushman both ultimately restorativeAn NYRB Classics Original Few writers had to confront as many of the last century's mass tragedies as Vasily Grossman, who wrote with terrifying clarity about the Shoah, the Battle of Stalingrad, and the Terror Famine in the Ukraine. An Armenian Sketchbook, however, shows us a very different Grossman, notable for his tenderness, warmth, and sense of fun. After the Soviet government confiscated or, as Grossman always put it, "arrested" Life and Fate,