Although Life and Fate centres around the moribund physicist Viktor Shtrum and the epic battle of Stalingrad, the novel weaves hundreds of interrelated stories and characters together to show a vivid cross-section of life under Stalin. Grossman was a high-profile frontline reporter during the war, and his fiction displays the same perceptiveness and honesty for which his journalism was renowned. Stories and characters arise and subside like waves in the broad river of humanity, winding through the horrors of the Eastern Front; the result is a novel that manages to be at once sweepingly panoramic and minutely detailed.

Life and Fate, by all accounts, is a work of colossal genius. Martin Amis called Grossman “the Tolstoy of the USSR,” and the historian Antony Beevor—speaking on a special Grossman edition of Start The Week on Radio 4 today—described the book as “one of the greatest Russian novels of the twentieth century.” Mark Damazer, the former controller of Radio 4 who commissioned the drama adaptation, was more laudatory still, calling Life and Fate “the best and most important novel of modern times.”

Grossman completed Life and Fate in 1960, but because of the novel’s dissidence—it dared to compare Nazism and Stalinism, for example—the manuscript was confiscated by the KGB, who famously seized the typewriter and carbon paper that Grossman used to write it. A decade and a half later, a small group of radicals managed to smuggle a microfilm version of the book under the Iron Curtain; an English edition was finally published in 1985. Frustratingly enough, by that point all eyes were on Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak and Life and Fate was eclipsed.

This new radio adaptation should bring the work to light again, though for the best parts of Life and Fate, you have to read the book. Continue reading on the Prospect Magazine website

“Britain is often described as a nation of animal-lovers, usually cats and dogs. Australians, however, can have wilder tastes. Jake Wallis Simons met one who feels much more at home in the jungle than he does in the big city.” NOTE: this recording includes JWS impersonating a post-coital baboon. The full story

On Saturday 23rd July, at 11:30am, Jake will be appearing on Radio 4′s From Our Own Correspondent. The story he will be telling is an unusual one, involving parrot worrying, puma taming, and . . . the call of a post-coital baboon. In this short clip, released by Radio 4 on Twitter as a teaser, Jake can be heard making like a baboon and generally being a bit of a pillock. At only 16 seconds in length, that’s got to be worth a listen.

Hear more (you mean you haven’t heard enough?)

The extraordinary Peter Allison, tickling the tummy of a traumatised puma

Listen to the audio (2 min 54 secs)

In this short clip I am interviewing Peter Allison, the animal tracker, adventurer, explorer, daredevil and writer, about how to understand the language of the animals. You will be able to hear more of this story very soon on BBC Radio 4 (though this was just recorded on my iPhone). Let me say this: Peter Allison is extraordinary. On the left is a picture of him tickling the tummy of a traumatised puma (click to enlarge). Stay tuned. –JWS

“The island of Malta does not exactly have a central bus station. Instead, it has the Funtana tat-Tritoni, an open-air fountain in the middle of the capital city Valletta, which is home to a frenzy of bus-related activity. From early morning until late at night, fume-belching buses sweep around the fountain, picking up passengers, negotiating log-jams and stopping for the odd half-hour rest.

As well as the crowds of Maltese commuters that could be seen thrusting their way around the vehicles (office workers, school children, elderly nuns), I also noticed a good number of nerdy-looking tourists who were photographing the buses, recording mysterious details in little notebooks and generally getting in the way . . .” Read the transcript

Malta: Jake Wallis Simons meets the people fighting to legalise divorce — and those trying to keep it outlawed.

Listen to the audio (5 min 17 secs)

“People came in ones and twos until the place was packed. Somebody closed the door to stifle the breeze. Then Father Angelo Seychell — a short, rotund priest in a spotless white robe — glided in, positioned himself beneath the crucifix, and began Mass. The congregation followed the proceedings automatically. But when it came to the sermon, there was an unexpected change . . .” Read the transcript

listen to the audio (12 mins 52 secs) Introduced by David Baddiel

“Buddha vs Buddha”: Jake Wallis Simons describes how an ancient row within Tibetan Buddhism is causing a modern schism, and why it led him to give up Buddhism for good.

Four Thought combines big ideas and evocative storytelling in a series of personal viewpoints – speakers take to the stage ready to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.

Recorded live at the RSA in London, these talks are unscripted, thought-provoking and entertaining, with a personal dimension.

Four Thought combines big ideas and evocative storytelling in a series of personal viewpoints – speakers take to the stage ready to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.

Recorded live at the RSA in London, these talks are unscripted, thought-provoking and entertaining, with a personal dimension.

More information

On April 7, Jake Wallis Simons will be speaking at the Royal Society of Arts as part of Radio 4′s exciting new series FOUR THOUGHT. He will be talking, unscripted, for 15 minutes on the subject of “what you didn’t know about Tibetan Buddhism”. Other speakers include Jonathan Sumption QC, the Independent columnist Christina Patterson, and the political scientist Professor Phil Cowley.

There will be a live studio audience. Find out more

"they have always maintained that Israel has no right to exist"

Listen to the audio (5 min 54 sec)

Transcript

Just ten minutes’ walk from bustling downtown Jerusalem is the district of Meah She’arim, home to the most inaccessible ultra Orthodox Jewish community in the world. It is a labyrinth of narrow, winding alleyways, and the apartment blocks are rickety, cramped and overcrowded. This is a poor community where life is dominated by religious conservatism and a dislike for outsiders. Enter this neighbourhood improperly dressed, and you risk being pelted with rubbish or stones, or even attacked with mace gas.

In the heart of this labyrinth is a prominent building with a large black flag hanging horizontally from the roof, symbolising a state of perpetual mourning. On the walls are signs in Hebrew, English and occasionally Arabic: “Zionists are not Jews, only racists,” says one. “Arabs yes, Zionists no,” says another. “Zionism is the holocaust of the Jewish nation,” says a third, and finally: “we mourn the 62-year existence of the state of Israel.”

This is the headquarters of the Neturei Karta, or “Guardians of the City,” one of Israel’s most controversial radical sects. Their male followers look no different from other Ultra Orthodox Jews, wearing black coats and hats, and bushy beards and ringlets. They live in Jerusalem and have been there since before Israel was established, but they have always maintained that the State has no right to exist.

Inside the building, amidst the sound of chanting from a distant room, and surrounded by bookshelves that strain under the weight of leather-bound scriptures, sits Rabbi Meir Hirsh, the leader of this organisation. A diminutive man in his late forties, he conducts himself with an air of considerable gravity. “God exiled us from our land two thousand years ago because of our sins,” he tells me in a surprisingly sonorous voice, “and He forbade us to return until the Messiah comes. The Zionists have rebelled against God’s will, captured Israel and turned it into a secular state, destroying the very root of Judaism. For as long as the State of Israel exists, “ he continues, “I will be telling the world that true Jews hate Zionism and everything it stands for. This is my life’s mission, like my father before me.”

It is significant that Rabbi Hirsh mentioned his father; he has recently died, leaving his son to shoulder the burden of leadership alone. Moshe Hirsh was a legendary figure, who led the Neturei Karta to prominence over a decade ago when he accepted a position in Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian cabinet, as Minister for Jewish Affairs. In this role, Moshe Hirsh argued consistently that Jews should be living as minority religious communities within an Arab-controlled state of Palestine. “For thirty years I never left my father’s side,” says Rabbi Hirsh as the sound of chanting rises and falls in the background. “He was a righteous man, and a close friend of Arafat. During the intifadas we met Arafat every two weeks. Arafat was a wise leader, and very genial.” And, the Rabbi insisted, absolutely not corrupt.

It is the substantial links between the Neturei Karta and the Palestinian factions that alienates them from mainstream Orthodox opinion.  Although some Orthodox groups have a degree of sympathy with their rejection of the secular Israeli state, consorting with the enemy is one step too far. In recent years, representatives of the Neturei Karta have been ramping up their high-profile relationship with Israel’s most hostile neighbours. In 2006 they were welcomed with open arms by President Ahmadinejad in Iran, and this year they spent the Sabbath as honoured guests of Hamas, after entering the Gaza Strip with an aid convoy. The photographs from events such as these are striking. The sight of black-clad Ultra Orthodox Jews being embraced by Ahmadinejad and Hamas leaders can only stick in the throat of the vast majority of Jews around the world.

“Our Arab friends have never shown us any anti-Semitism,” says Rabbi Hirsh, “because we have no quarrels with them. Through using our influence with Hamas and Fateh, we have been able to stop many suicide attacks. We tell them they should be targeting soldiers, not ordinary people.”

I put to him that it is a tribute to Israel’s democracy that the Neturei Karta is tolerated at all. He shrugs. “We exist because God wills it,” he says simply.

I find it a relief to leave Meah She’arim and rejoin modernity. With the aid of an Arabic coffee, I sit in a café and reflect. The existence of the Neturei Karta is symptomatic of the complexity that surrounds one of the most intractable conflicts in the world. This is a region where politics is as tangled as the Gordian Knot, and resists all attempts at simplification.