One of the best accounts I've read of the ravages of war: Unforgiving Years

Anyone who doubts whether Victor Serge is a major author should just get a copy of Unforgiving Years (from NYRB; written 1946-47, first published posthumously in 1971 in French) and start reading section 2 (of 4), The Flame Beneath the Snow, an account of the journey (during WWI I) into Leningrad, under siege during the war; we follow Soviet agent Darius (?) into Leningrad on a harrowing flight, then a nighttime journey through the city - a place of Bosch-like scenes of death and poverty and brutality and suffering from the Baltic cold. You don't really need a context - you can read this section on its own - and it stands as one of the best accounts I've ever read of the ravages of war. Of course there is a context, which Serge established in the first section, in which Darius appears briefly, bidding farewell to fellow agent D/Sascha/Battisti (he has many aliases), a wanted man who has turned against Stalin and is trying to leave the spy service and leave Europe ahead of Stalin's agents.That section - Secret Agent - ends w/ D and his girlfriend on the water's edge, the foggy city of Le Havre, in search of some sort of transport to America where he hopes to find refuge. That's also a great passage - I don't think I've read a better account of the experience of gazing at the open ocean, a mix of beauty and awe and fear. Yes, Serge's plot can be sometimes obscure and oblique, but we do get the overall message of lives in upheaval because of the war and because of the paranoia and ruthlessness of the Stalinist agents, more concerned with betrayals among their own than w/ the wartime foes.