Hello and welcome to Backlisted, a brand new podcast that gives old books a second chance. I'm John Mitchinson and he's Andy Miller.

We're readers, writers and editors of books. We are the leevis and butthead of the book world, but which is which only you can decide.

We're coming to you from the kitchen table of Unbound, the website where readers and writers meet to create great books.

We're joined today by Lissa Evans, the acclaimed novelist and producer of Father Ted,

and Matthew Clayton, the rather less acclaimed writer and producer of tenuous literary links,

as you'll discover later.

Andy, what have you been reading this week or generally

Andy what have you been reading this week?

I've read several books this week the first book that I finished this week was the 900 pages of Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman, a novel I've been meaning to read for 20 years ever since you John Mitchinson gave me a copy.

It's a bulging, rippling Russian masterpiece, isn't it?

It takes you high, it takes you low, it takes you from all angles.

It's the, it's an entirely inappropriate subject for light-heartedness, John, if you don't mind me saying.

It's true. It is an amazing, it's amazing novel though, isn't it?

It's an amazing novel though, isn't it? It's one absolutely wonderful book.

It is a quite consciously, I think, modeled on War and Peace

and attempts to tell you the story of Stalingrad, the siege of Stalingrad in the Second World War,

but also by the extension the rise of Stalingrad prior to the Second World War, through

the Second World War and out the other side, by giving you

a massive cast of characters, all of whom have ludicrously long Russian names, throwing

down about 50 of them in the first 30 pages, and then begging you to keep up.

But if you stick with it, as is often the case with these long books it really really delivers I have to say about the

500 page mark I found it incredibly moving.

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