About the book: 2012 / Anyone preparing to see another glossy picture of the war - with victorious marches, patriotic sentiments and high-profile exploits - can immediately put this book aside. The new novel by Daniil Granin is a look at the Great Patriotic War from the inside out, not from the point of view of generals and marshals who calmly sent entire armies into the heat and meat grinder, but from the inside, from the trenches and trenches. Against the backdrop of the hardships, horrors and ugliness of war, the author gives the opportunity to speak out to a simple lieutenant, one of those to whom we owe our victory. Those whose deaths were reported by official reports from the Information Bureau as “minor losses in local battles.” Those who are unlikely to choose such a fate for themselves, be it their own will. This novel is in no way autobiographical, although it is not difficult to understand who the author of the book and Lieutenant D. really are to each other. Nevertheless, on the pages of the novel, two different people live their own lives: one is young, impulsive, daring, romantic, and the second is wise, who knows the value of life and has learned to withstand circumstances. And each of them has its own truth. The book uses drawings by the Austrian artist Hans Liska. The cover uses an illustration by artist Vladimir Vasilkovsky.