Few battles have been as decisive for the history of mankind as the battle of Stalingrad. And few have had a witness in the front line of fire of the human and literary quality of Vasili Grossman. The author of the memorable novel Life and Destiny was a war correspondent with the Soviet army throughout World War II and nobody like him knew how to capture what happened during the battle of Stalingrad. The texts that make up this volume, extracted from the book Years of War, narrate what its author lived on the Stalingrad front from the arrival of the bulk of the Soviet troops to the city in the first days of September 1942 until December 1942, when the battle begins to clearly opt for the Soviet side. Read today, 75 years after the end of the battle, Vasily Grossman's chronicles show what only great literature can do: how history, beyond figures and chronology of events, is embodied in thousands of individual destinies, of concrete people, soldiers and civilians, women and men, young and old, And in this way it allows us to understand the intimacy of the human being in the face of the most extreme experiences.