Kolyma Tales

Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982) was an outstanding Russian prose writer and poet who spent seventeen years in Stalin's camps. "Remember, the most important thing, the camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone," Shalamov wrote.... "A person — neither a commander nor a prisoner needs to see it. But if you have seen it — you must tell the truth, no matter how terrible it may be. 〈…〉 For my part, I have long decided that I will dedicate the rest of my life to this truth." "Kolyma Tales" is the main work of V. Shalamov, narrating the life of prisoners in forced labor camps in the 1930s–1950s. The stories were written between 1954 and 1973, but in the writer's homeland, the works were published only after the author's death, in the late 1980s. This edition publishes a cycle of "Kolyma Tales," as well as stories from the collections "Left Bank," "The Artist of the Shovel," "Essays on the Criminal World," "Resurrection of the Larch," and "The Glove, or KR-2."