Alpine Ballad

«Author of the most piercing books about war», «the most read Belarusian author in the world», «the last realist writer in Europe» — all this has been said about Vasily Bykov. Three days before the start of the Great Patriotic War, Vasily Bykov turned 17 years old. In 1942, the former student of the Vitebsk Art School and an external student of the Vitebsk Factory-Plant Training School was drafted to the front, where he participated in battles for Kryvyi Rih, Oleksandriya, Znamyanka, passed through the territories of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria, and was wounded twice. In 1947, the first short story by 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 preserve humanity in inhuman circumstances? What to save amid the horrors of war — the body or the soul? What does a person suffer for, does he live only for himself? The heroes of Vasily Bykov, an outstanding master of military prose of the 20th century, seek answers to these and other questions. The collection includes the famous stories «Alpine Ballad» and «His Battalion».