Alpine Ballad. To Live Until Dawn

"The author of the most poignant books about war", "the most read Belarusian author in the world", "the last realistic 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. In 1942, the former student of the Vitebsk Art School was drafted to the front, where he participated in the battles for Kryvyi Rih, Oleksandriya, Znamyanka, passed through the territory of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria, and was wounded twice. In 1947, his first short story was published. Bykov's works marked a new stage in the literary understanding of military events, combining the tragic specificity of war, "trench truth", with timeless issues of existence. How to retain humanity in inhuman circumstances? What to save amid the horrors of war — the body or the soul? For what does a person suffer, 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 novellas by Vasily Bykov, "Alpine Ballad" and "To Live Until Dawn".