| 
 enlarge | Author: Varlam Shalamov
Creator: John Glad
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $9.12
You Save: $6.88 (43%)
New (38) Used (11) from $6.40
Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 33782
Media: Paperback
Pages: 528
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0140186956
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140186956
ASIN: 0140186956
Publication Date: February 1, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 28
 Inside the gulag November 10, 2006
Sherry Brown (Philadelphia, PA United States)
This book shows what life was like in the gulag during Stalin's reign of terror. The short stories illustrate different aspects of life in Siberia and how little hope there was that anyone would survive in that place for 8 - 10 years. Amazingly, there is some humor. The human spirit can never be completely quenched. The author has a good writing style and conveys the horros of Kolyma.
 "Like Auschwitz without the gas chambers..." August 29, 2006
Julee Rudolf (Oak Harbor, WA USA)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
is how Kolyma, one of the coldest of all the Soviet forced-labor camps, is described in one of the wonderfully written fifty-five short stories included in Shalamov's Kolyma Tales. The stories are typically autobiographical or based on actual events that the author experienced first hand during his 17 years in the Gulag system. From My First Tooth, a beating of Shalamov's which led to the loss of a tooth; to Tamara the [...], a camp dog, murdered by a soldier who gets his due; to Lend-Lease, the exposure of a mass grave of bodies frozen by the permafrost and forever preserved for all to see - the stories tell about the day to day struggles that millions of people went through, the brutal work itself, with almost impossible to achieve daily work quotas, starvation, the fight to stay alive with the constant threat of frostbite, scurvy, typhoid, tuberculosis and leprosy, among other diseases. The incessant squirming lice, working in temperatures colder than 40 degrees below zero without any heat and with improper clothing - feet often covered in rags and death (your own and that of your comrades) ever present. Prisoners informing on each other; women in fear of rape (from other prisoners and camp guards); self-mutilation to be relieved of work duty if only for a few days or weeks, followed by (much wanted) infection, possibly death and if not, then a longer sentence; interrogation and living in constant filth, sadness and despair was a way of life and death at Kolyma.
These unbelievably true stories are not nearly as long or as difficult to tackle as The Gulag Archipelago, and would read well together with Man is Wolf to Man, similar happenings told in a different format.
"Friendship is born neither of need nor of misfortune" March 31, 2006
William Dalton (Providence, RI)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Shalamov provides the perfect counterpoint for Solzhenitsyn-while Solzhenitsyn is bombastic, Shalamov is understated; while Solzhenitsyn is resolutely hopeful, Shalamov luxuriates in a sort of charred, cynical despair that is unusual in literature; and while Solzhenitsyn makes pretenses to be the voice of the Gulag, Shalamov can only speak for himself. Shalamov's stories are wrenching and vicious, the voice of single, recognizable human being faced with the entire murderous apparatus of the Gulag. The mere existence of the Kolyma Tales is astonishing. Shalamov was somehow able to draw genuine artistic inspiration from his years in the camps, and perhaps the style of the Tales themselves-detached, understated, ironic-is the only form that could survive such an extreme experience.
Another advantage Shalamov has over Solzhenitsyn is that readers are unlikely to mistake his stories for fully researched historical writing, a problem with the Gulag Archipelago. Both men were predominately artists, but Shalamov does not engage in the same type of social criticism and thus leaves himself less open to attack.
Bitter Truths August 29, 2005
JR Hasbrouck (Vancouver, Canada)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
Prison literature has a long history in the Russian tradition, from Fyodor Dostoevsky's "House of the Dead" to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" and "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." Varlam Shalamov's "Kolyma Tales" are quite unique however. Though told in a documentary style reminiscent of the Classical historians, the stories have the precision, symbolism, and memorable characters that make for great literature. Even the repetitive subject matter and themes do not come across as "whining" or self-absorption; they are matter-of-fact, direct, and yet always subtle.
Perhaps one of the scariest tales in the collection is "The Golden Taiga"--depicting an indirect interrogation carried out from a bunk bed, that does not involve any authorities and hints at the sinister machinery of human relationships without any graphic description. Others, like the "The Apostle Paul", suggest the power of suffering in eradicating memory, and the tragegy of losing what is most sacred to the human spirit through just such loss.
This book is a must-read for any idealists who suppose that the Sickle and Hammer was the moral and reasonable alternative to Fascism in the early XXth Century. No one visits Shalamov's Kolyma without shuddering and feeling its sobering effects. The stories are quite convincing, convicting, and challenging--they are stocked with bitter truths, which are the antidote to the sentimentalism and intellectually irresponsible idealism that is characteristic of much political and social theory today. Good logic can very easily translate into good horror, and there is a very short leap from social contracts to Article 58! Centrists will like it, I suppose.
It's a great book.
An eerily entertaining title August 4, 2005
Polinger Attila (Hungary)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I have purchased Shalamov's short story compilation in 1989 in Hungarian edition. The author's picture was on the back most probably an old camp photograph that struck me because in it he looked like a man having suffered a lot and being close to the end.
When I started reading them I wondered how could someone write stories in a way he did. He had no sensible emotion towards the players neither positive nor negative, yet I was moved by the stories.
I bought Kolyma Tales in English because it contained a wider compilation than the other edition (turned out later that it still did not contain several stories that the other version did; still I have to look for more?). Some new stories were equally as good as those in the other book, some were just a snapshot of a situation or short series of events. A few were tiring to read perhaps because of the many other ones that I read previously, I felt these somewhat less interesting. But the closing few stories are really good. On the other hand I miss very much "Course" from this compilation (Hungarian edition did contain it). This is the tale that helps us understand how and why Shalamov managed to survive.
It was interesting to compare the Hungarian text and the English text. I have found some minor differences at places. These were generally phrasing differences, that is, not the exact words were used (as if each translator had used different original text), but the meaning was achieved (still I'd be curious how it is really written in Russian). In particular, one example of this is in "Lawyers' Plot", when the guards and Andreev talk to reach other in a roadside buffet where they stopped for the night on the way to their destination, involving a third prisoner. There is even some extra words/sentences in this English version compared to the Hungarian one.
For those who have never read Shalamov's tales I strongly suggest buying and reading it. The typesetting of this book is very eye friendly enabling reading easy. And entertainment is guaranteed even if it is an eery one.
|
|
|