The Guardian, 27 May 2011
By John Plunkett

Kenneth Branagh will star in an eight-hour BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Vasily Grossman's epic wartime masterpiece, 'Life and Fate'.

In the sort of "stripped" scheduling tactics favoured by reality TV shows, Radio 4 will devote every one of its drama strands across a seven-day period to the work, completed in 1960, which has been hailed as the most important Russian novel of the 20th century.

Branagh, the star of BBC1's acclaimed crime series 'Wallander' and director of recent big-screen comic-book adaptation 'Thor', will star in the drama alongside Samuel West, Sara Kestelman, John Sessions and Kenneth Cranham.

Radio 4 will also devote a documentary to the author as well as a special edition of Start the Week broadcast from St Peter's College, Oxford, part of a series of public events about the novel and its adaptation. It is probably no coincidence that the head of St Peter's College is the former head of Radio 4, Mark Damazer.

The current Radio 4 controller, Gwyneth Williams, said she was "thrilled that Radio 4's dramatisation of Life and Fate will bring this remarkable but little-known work to a wider audience. "The novel's underlying message – the ability of the human spirit to endure in the face of authoritarian rule and war – is as relevant today as it was 70 years ago."

Fans of the Archers need not worry – the soap will be the only regular Radio 4 drama slot not given over to the drama, which will be broadcast between 18 and 24 September.