“Mama” was written in 1960 but first published only in 1989, in the volume
Neskol’ko pechal’nykh dnei[A Few Sad Days]. Like Grossman’s other last stories, it is more laconic and more modernist than his two great Stalingrad novels,
Za pravoe delo(For a Just Cause [English translation titled “Stalingrad”]) and
Zhizn’ i sud’ba[Life and Fate]. In
Life and FateGrossman spells out his thoughts very clearly indeed and is not afraid to repeat them; in his last stories he often only hints at them. If
Life and Fateis comparable to a Shostakovich symphony, these stories are more like his quartets.
Like much of Grossman’s fiction, “Mama” has its roots in real life; it is based on the true story of an orphaned girl adopted in the early 1930s by Nikolai Yezhov and his wife
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Citation: Chandler, Robert. "Mama". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 December 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35779, accessed 27 December 2024.]
