SOURCE: "War without Peace," in New York Review of Books, Vol. XLI, No. 18, November 3, 1994, pp. 4-6.

In the review below, Banville lauds Generations of Winter as a "major document of our times, and one with lasting power."

In Generations of Winter Vassily Aksyonov has set out bravely, one might even say brazenly, to write a twentieth-century War and Peace, mingling fictional and historical characters in a great sprawling saga tracing the history of the Soviet Union. This first volume runs from 1925 to 1945; a second volume brings the story into the post-war era. The surprise is that he has succeeded to a remarkable degree. To predict at this point that his novel will prove as enduring as Tolstoy's classic is, of course, impossible. There is a certain coarseness in Aksyonov's literary manner which can be apt, certainly, for the task at hand—has there ever been a coarser place...