Survive until dawn. Alpine Ballad

«Author of the most piercing books about war», «the most widely read Belarusian author in the world», «the last realist writer of Europe» — all this has been said about Vasily Bykov. Three days before the start of the Great... Patriotic War, Vasily Bykov turned 17. In 1942, the former student of the Vitebsk Art College and an external student of the Vitebsk Factory and Vocational School was drafted to the front, where he participated in battles for Kryvyi Rih, Alexandria, Znamenka, crossed the territory of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Austria, and was wounded twice. In 1947, the first story of the young writer was published. Bykov's works marked a new stage in the literature's understanding of military events, combining the tragic specifics of war, «trench truth», with «eternal» problems of existence. How to maintain humanity in inhumane circumstances? What to save amidst the horrors of war — the body or the soul? For what does a person suffer, does he live only for himself? These and other questions are sought for answers by the heroes of Vasily Bykov, an outstanding master of war prose of the 20th century. The collection includes the famous novellas «Alpine Ballad», «Sotnikov», «Obelisk», «Survive until dawn», «His Battalion», «Go and Do Not Return».