Kolyma Tales
Varlam Shalamov • 1978
Devastation Rating
prison survival literary fiction historical trauma
Our Take
Shalamov survived seventeen years in the Soviet Arctic camps and wrote stories from within those years that have the density of compressed time. No catharsis. No lessons. Just the record of what captivity does to the body and mind. The most unsparing prison literature ever written, because the writer refused to protect the reader.
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