STALIN ORGAN; TRANS. BY MICHAEL HOFMANN

the long version

"It's 1942, at the Eastern Front. Soldiers lie in horrible holes in the ground, mingling with corpses in claustrophobic spaces. Tunnelled beneath a radio mast, a group of German soldiers await the order to blow themselves up, while elsewhere a runner desperately tries to avoid getting caught in the action. Despite advances in technology, the Eastern Front resembles the trench warfare of World War I." "The Stalin Organ - a slang military term for a multiple rocket launcher - is the first of Gert Ledig's classic triad of books written in the 1950s on World War II; the second Payback, was published for the first time in English by Granta. Switching between the German and Russian lines, Ledig brings us the experience of war from both sides of the conflict, as the two armies tensely hold out for the other side to give, and he describes in detail the graphic and resourceful violence that maims and kills the barely individuated soldiers."--BOOK JACKET.