Daniil Granin, a man not from here

He entered the literature in 1949 with the story «Second Option» and began with heroes and themes close to him, a graduate of the Leningrad Polytechnic University — engineers and scientists encountered bureaucratic machines in his books and faced a serious moral choice. Significant novels of those years — «The Searchers» and «I’m going into a thunderstorm» (1954, 1962). The Second World War became another and, perhaps, the main theme of Granin’s work. The topic is also largely personal, because Granin fought and met the most terrible blockade winter in the trenches near Pushkino. The blockade book (1977-1981), prepared by him together with Ales Adamovich, was a real event in the history of the perception of the Leningrad blockade — the authors described 900 days, relying on repeatedly verified documentary material. The reissue contains a new chapter on the post-war repressions of the Leningrad Case, censored layout sheets from the 70s and 80s, and deleted fragments of chapters. In the new book «A Man Not From Here» Granin again writes about the blockade. Here his memories and other people’s stories are combined, artistic with documentary, momentary with eternal. Granin speaks of a difficult era, but never tires of reminding: “Life must be perceived as a miracle. And a miracle cannot be a misfortune … «