Picked by Stalingrad Trilogy fans

Here are 37 books that Stalingrad Trilogy fans have personally recommended once you finish the Stalingrad Trilogy series. Book DNA is a community of authors and super-readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

Book cover of Life and Fate

Andrei Kushnir Author Of Epic Journey

From my list on Ukrainian Russian relationship.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Ukrainian American artist and author and I have always been interested in the “story behind the story” about Ukraine, the home of my parents and ancestors. I love books that explain things through stories. Much like, I think, paintings explain things through visuals. Russia’s war on Ukraine has only sharpened my interest. In my paintings, I discovered that much of U.S. history and geography enjoys an unexpected similarity to the situation of Ukraine. And, just as Ukraine includes the many disparate nationalities of its inhabitants, the U.S., a nation of immigrants, is comprised of people of every skin color, religion, and outlook. 

Andrei's book list on Ukrainian Russian relationship

Andrei Kushnir Why Andrei loves this book

I took up this gigantic novel on the recommendation of a friend who recommended Grey Bees. I was skeptical that I would read much of it because it is about Russia during the Second World War. However, once I got into the book, I was blown away.

Grossman is a bigger artist with words than any painter. He had a deep insight into humanity, every aspect of it. The chapters are short, but the book is over 800 pages long. I wanted to stop, but each chapter presented such insights that it was impossible not to be in awe at his writing. The story includes descriptions of the battle of Stalingrad from both sides, family life, the plight of Jews, and much, much more. 

After reading this book, I feel that I have lived another lifetime. There is a lot of sadness, some comedy, and lots of horror and…

By Vasily Grossman ,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Life and Fate as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Based around the pivotal WWII battle of Stalingrad (1942-3), where the German advance into Russia was eventually halted by the Red Army, and around an extended family, the Shaposhnikovs, and their many friends and acquaintances, Life and Fate recounts the experience of characters caught up in an immense struggle between opposing armies and ideologies. Nazism and Communism are appallingly similar, 'two poles of one magnet', as a German camp commander tells a shocked old Bolshevik prisoner. At the height of the battle Russian soldiers and citizens alike are at last able to speak out as they choose, and without reprisal…


Book cover of Grey Bees

Andrei Kushnir Author Of Epic Journey

From my list on Ukrainian Russian relationship.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Ukrainian American artist and author and I have always been interested in the “story behind the story” about Ukraine, the home of my parents and ancestors. I love books that explain things through stories. Much like, I think, paintings explain things through visuals. Russia’s war on Ukraine has only sharpened my interest. In my paintings, I discovered that much of U.S. history and geography enjoys an unexpected similarity to the situation of Ukraine. And, just as Ukraine includes the many disparate nationalities of its inhabitants, the U.S., a nation of immigrants, is comprised of people of every skin color, religion, and outlook. 

Andrei's book list on Ukrainian Russian relationship

Andrei Kushnir Why Andrei loves this book

I love this book because it presents the story of a man in a very complex situation. He lives in the area of the Ukrainian Donbas region that is occupied by Russians who took over the area by force. So, his freedom is limited.

The time period in the book is just before the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. He is a beekeeper and lives a very simple life. I like that the book takes you into his mind as he makes his way through the period covered by the story. Things that first seem good, after thinking, may be bad, and vice versa.

I felt that his thinking accurately relates to the process of how people think. It is a very gentle story, but so compelling that I wanted to apportion reading the book so that I could digest, understand and most of all enjoy the story. 

By Andrey Kurkov , Boris Dralyuk (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Grey Bees as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With a warm yet political humor, Ukraine’s most famous novelist presents a balanced and illuminating portrait of modern conflict.



Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine's Grey Zone, the no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has been dragging on for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a rival from his schooldays. With little food and no electricity, under constant threat of bombardment, Sergeyich's one remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must take…


Book cover of The Jew Who Was Ukrainian

Andrei Kushnir Author Of Epic Journey

From my list on Ukrainian Russian relationship.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Ukrainian American artist and author and I have always been interested in the “story behind the story” about Ukraine, the home of my parents and ancestors. I love books that explain things through stories. Much like, I think, paintings explain things through visuals. Russia’s war on Ukraine has only sharpened my interest. In my paintings, I discovered that much of U.S. history and geography enjoys an unexpected similarity to the situation of Ukraine. And, just as Ukraine includes the many disparate nationalities of its inhabitants, the U.S., a nation of immigrants, is comprised of people of every skin color, religion, and outlook. 

Andrei's book list on Ukrainian Russian relationship

Andrei Kushnir Why Andrei loves this book

I love this book because its author presents the story of the protagonist in such a flip, offhand way that it reminds me a bit of JD Saliger’s Catcher in the Rye. There is dark humor, sarcasm, and total disregard of any possible opposing perspective—yet the main character struggles as a sort of Everyman.

This book also reminds me of Kennedy’s Confederacy of Dunces, parts are laugh aloud funny. I couldn’t help but go along with the joke. Underneath it all, however, is a lot of deep thought (and knowledge) about Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians.

Lots of history, or should I say anti-history. As I plowed through this short novel, I kept wondering how Motyl would top each chapter, only to find that his rampant ingenuity has no bounds. This one stuck with me!

By Alexander J. Motyl ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Jew Who Was Ukrainian as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Jew Who Was Ukrainian is a blackly comedic, anti-historical, and absurdist novel about a tortured Jewish-Ukrainian man who struggles vainly to find meaning at the intersection of Hitler's Holocaust and Stalin's Gulag. The hero of this preposterous story is Volodymyr Frauenzimmer, a man with a preposterous name and a preposterous past. His Ukrainian mother was a Nazi concentration camp guard and hates Jews. His Jewish father was a Stalinist butcher and hates Ukrainians. Poor Volodymyr doesn't know how to cope with his dreadful past until he discovers the redeeming power of hatred and resolves to kill the Exceptionally Great…


Book cover of Kobzar

Andrei Kushnir Author Of Epic Journey

From my list on Ukrainian Russian relationship.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Ukrainian American artist and author and I have always been interested in the “story behind the story” about Ukraine, the home of my parents and ancestors. I love books that explain things through stories. Much like, I think, paintings explain things through visuals. Russia’s war on Ukraine has only sharpened my interest. In my paintings, I discovered that much of U.S. history and geography enjoys an unexpected similarity to the situation of Ukraine. And, just as Ukraine includes the many disparate nationalities of its inhabitants, the U.S., a nation of immigrants, is comprised of people of every skin color, religion, and outlook. 

Andrei's book list on Ukrainian Russian relationship

Andrei Kushnir Why Andrei loves this book

I love this book of poetry because there is no question that once you start reading it in Ukrainian or in English translation, you are aware that it is by a genius.

No person I know would have the knowledge of human relationships, national character, historical insight, and vocabulary to present such a forceful account of the Ukrainian culture, mind, and traditions. I felt that I learned much more about my own background than had I read libraries full of books, volumes of newspapers, or watched thousands of YouTube videos.

I had to stick with it many times, but the journey was well worth it. I felt that I was reading the Bible of Ukraine—but it explains the story of a people, pointing fingers where necessary. 

By Taras Shevchenko ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Kobzar as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Masterfully fulfilled by Peter Fedynsky, Voice of America journalist and expert on Ukrainian studies, this first ever English translation of the complete Kobzar brings out Ukraine's rich cultural heritage. As a foundational text, The Kobzar has played an important role in galvanizing the Ukrainian identity and in the development of Ukraine's written language and Ukrainian literature. The first editions had been censored by the Russian czar, but the book still made an enduring impact on Ukrainian culture. There is no reliable count of how many editions of the book have been published, but an official estimate made in 1976 put…


Book cover of Whiskey Priest

Andrei Kushnir Author Of Epic Journey

From my list on Ukrainian Russian relationship.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Ukrainian American artist and author and I have always been interested in the “story behind the story” about Ukraine, the home of my parents and ancestors. I love books that explain things through stories. Much like, I think, paintings explain things through visuals. Russia’s war on Ukraine has only sharpened my interest. In my paintings, I discovered that much of U.S. history and geography enjoys an unexpected similarity to the situation of Ukraine. And, just as Ukraine includes the many disparate nationalities of its inhabitants, the U.S., a nation of immigrants, is comprised of people of every skin color, religion, and outlook. 

Andrei's book list on Ukrainian Russian relationship

Andrei Kushnir Why Andrei loves this book

I enjoyed this book because it presents escapism, pure and simple. The story is much like the James Bond books and movies. Lots of violence and sex. Maybe it will someday be made into a movie.

I liked that the protagonist is a Ukrainian American woman. The author makes her very resourceful but somewhat jaded and sarcastic about everything. I found this to be a short, fun read.

By Alexander J. Motyl ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Whiskey Priest as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Themes of identity, faith, and redemption combine as a disillusioned KGB assassin and an insecure female U.S. diplomat track down an Ivy League professor running a prostitution ring in Ukraine. Anatoly Filatov is the "whiskey priest," a despairing Communist true believer, whose world comes crashing down with the collapse of the USSR. Jane Sweet is the foreign-service officer, a Ukrainian-American woman who discovers her identity, as both a woman and a Ukrainian, while liberating herself from her past. The action heats up as Filatov, who is a part-time hit man for the Russian Mafia, kills three American professors in Vienna.…


Book cover of Conquered City

Paul Clark Author Of The Price of Dreams

From my list on life in the Soviet Union.

Why am I passionate about this?

At the age of 16, I briefly joined the International Socialists, a small British Trotskyist party. Though I soon became disillusioned, it was a formative experience that left me with a lifelong fascination with communism and the Soviet Union. Over the following decades, I read everything I could about the subject, both fiction and non-fiction. In the years after the fall of communism, the ideas that eventually culminated in the writing of this book began to form in my head.

Paul's book list on life in the Soviet Union

Paul Clark Why Paul loves this book

Serge was a supporter of the Bolshevik revolution, though he never lost sight of its flaws. 

This extraordinary novel centres on Petrograd at the height of the civil war, as economic collapse, hunger, the threat from the Whites, and the depredations of the Red Terror crush the city’s spirit and ultimately destroy the revolution, even if the Bolshevik regime it spawned survives.

By Victor Serge , Richard Greeman (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Conquered City as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

1919–1920: St. Petersburg, city of the czars, has fallen to the Revolution. Camped out in the splendid palaces of the former regime, the city’s new masters seek to cement their control, even as the counterrevolutionary White Army regroups. Conquered City, Victor Serge’s most unrelenting narrative, is structured like a detective story, one in which the new political regime tracks down and eliminates its enemies—the spies, speculators, and traitors hidden among the mass of common people. 

Conquered City is about terror: the Red Terror and the White Terror. But mainly about the Red, the Communists who have dared to pick up…


Book cover of The Porcupine

Paul Clark Author Of The Price of Dreams

From my list on life in the Soviet Union.

Why am I passionate about this?

At the age of 16, I briefly joined the International Socialists, a small British Trotskyist party. Though I soon became disillusioned, it was a formative experience that left me with a lifelong fascination with communism and the Soviet Union. Over the following decades, I read everything I could about the subject, both fiction and non-fiction. In the years after the fall of communism, the ideas that eventually culminated in the writing of this book began to form in my head.

Paul's book list on life in the Soviet Union

Paul Clark Why Paul loves this book

This short novel is not set in the Soviet Union but in an unnamed post-Communist country that bears a striking resemblance to Bulgaria. The central character is the deposed Communist dictator, on trial for his crimes. The story is seen through his eyes, and he paints himself not as a villain but a misunderstood hero, a man who devoted his life to building socialism and a better life for his people. I know of no other book that is so good at getting into the head of a former dictator.

By Julian Barnes ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Porcupine as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending trains his laser-bright prose on the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe.

Stoyo Petkanov, the deposed Party leader, is placed on trial for crimes that range from corruption to political murder. Petkanov's guilt—and the righteousness of his opponents—would seem to be self-evident. But, as brilliantly imagined by Barnes, the trial of this cunning and unrepentant dictator illuminates the shadowy frontier between the rusted myths of the Communist past and a capitalist future in which everything is up for grabs.


Book cover of The White Guard

Paul Clark Author Of The Price of Dreams

From my list on life in the Soviet Union.

Why am I passionate about this?

At the age of 16, I briefly joined the International Socialists, a small British Trotskyist party. Though I soon became disillusioned, it was a formative experience that left me with a lifelong fascination with communism and the Soviet Union. Over the following decades, I read everything I could about the subject, both fiction and non-fiction. In the years after the fall of communism, the ideas that eventually culminated in the writing of this book began to form in my head.

Paul's book list on life in the Soviet Union

Paul Clark Why Paul loves this book

This book goes back to the chaos of the years after the Bolshevik revolution. It is set in Kyiv, which changed hands more than a dozen times during the brutal civil war that followed. The story is very autobiographical and focuses on a middle-class family that supports a pro-German faction in its struggle against Bolsheviks, Russian Whites, and Ukrainian nationalists. This isn’t a panoramic novel in the style of War and Peace but a worm’s-eye view of the chaos that has been unleashed. Brilliant.

By Mikhail Bulgakov ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The White Guard as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Set in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev during the chaotic winter of 1918-19, The White Guard, Bulgakov's first full-length novel, tells the story of a Russian-speaking family trapped in circumstances that threaten to destroy them. As in Tolstoy's War and Peace, the narrative centres on the stark contrast between the cosy domesticity of family life on the one hand, and wide-ranging and destructive historical events on the other.

The result is a disturbing, often shocking story, illuminated, however, by shafts of light that testify to people's resilience, humanity and ability to love in even the most adverse circumstances.


Book cover of Stalin's Door

Paul Clark Author Of The Price of Dreams

From my list on life in the Soviet Union.

Why am I passionate about this?

At the age of 16, I briefly joined the International Socialists, a small British Trotskyist party. Though I soon became disillusioned, it was a formative experience that left me with a lifelong fascination with communism and the Soviet Union. Over the following decades, I read everything I could about the subject, both fiction and non-fiction. In the years after the fall of communism, the ideas that eventually culminated in the writing of this book began to form in my head.

Paul's book list on life in the Soviet Union

Paul Clark Why Paul loves this book

A brilliant evocation of the paranoia of the Stalin regime and the extraordinary extent of its surveillance of members of the Communist elite. We follow the story of a young girl as her family is destroyed and she is sent to the GULAG. Although it delves deep into the horrors of Stalinist persecution, this book is also an uplifting tale of love, courage, and survival.

By John St. Clair ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stalin's Door as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the dangerous time of Russia’s Great Terror, a knock on the door late at night could mean only one thing!

Moscow, 1937. As mortal fear engulfs the capital city, a singular man cements his lethal grip of absolute power over an entire nation. Accusations, mass arrests, executions, and deportations become de rigueur. Stalin’s cult of personality is so fearsome, that even a simple question could get you killed—or worse. Stalin’s dreaded secret police, the NKVD, would pit neighbor against neighbor in the insatiable hunt for the spies and saboteurs which threaten the supreme leader’s tyranny. The crisis will irrecoverably…


Book cover of A Woman in Berlin

Lucy Noakes Author Of Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain

From my list on civilians in war.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been fascinated by the Second World War since I was a child. I grew up with tales of London and Coventry in wartime, stories of family separation, rationing, and air raids. The stories that really gripped me included the streams of refugees passing my grandmother’s house in the suburbs of Coventry after that city was bombed, and the night my aunts and (infant) father spent waiting to be rescued from a bombed house in south London. As a historian I wanted to know more about stories like this, and about the ways that wars shape lives, and my books have returned again and again to the civilian experience of war.

Lucy's book list on civilians in war

Lucy Noakes Why Lucy loves this book

This isn’t an easy read, but it’s an important one. A diary by an anonymous female journalist trapped in Berlin as bombs fall and the Red Army closes in, it describes in graphic detail her struggle for survival between April and June 1945. Berlin’s women had difficult choices to make in this period, and the author records unflinchingly her decision to choose the ‘protection’ of one Russian soldier over repeated rape by multiple others. It is one of the few books that tell us about war from the perspective of civilian women, immersing us in their world and recording the impact of political leaders’ delusions of grandeur and glory on individual lives. I didn’t find this an easy book to pick up, but found it even harder to put down.

By Anonymous ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Woman in Berlin as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is a devastating book. It is matter-of-fact, makes no attempt to score political points, does not attempt to solicit sympathy for its protagonist and yet is among the most chilling indictments of war I have ever read. Everybody, in particular every woman ought to read it' - Arundhati Roy

'One of the most important personal accounts ever written about the effects of war and defeat' - Antony Beevor

Between April 20th and June 22nd 1945 the anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin wrote about life within the falling city as it was sacked by the Russian Army. Fending…