An Armenian Sketchbook Philip Cushman both ultimately restorative

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,