Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Keep Forever: Gulag Memoirs
Product Code:
9781475246896
ISBN13:
9781475246896
Condition:
New
$12.33
Keep Forever: Gulag Memoirs
$12.33
In the freezing nights of a labor camp, fifty prisoners "settle in like herring in a barrel, tightly nuzzled next to each other, and someone among them would cover the rest with clothing". And then the night-time storyteller begins his tale. Aleksandr Sokolenko's four true stories of life in the Soviet camps detail a world of baffling catch-22s, but also of intense community. From farm work to timber-driving, wrestling marmots to runaway brides, the daily reality captivates. Vivid characters fill the pages: the aged merchant Semyonov's rich life history and wry acceptance ("At least here, they can't arrest you"); the thief-king who tries to break free from his followers; the high-society orphan who turns barbering into an art; and the inept, vicious Captain Ivanov. Stepping back to narrate their stories as well as his own, Sokolenko offers us a broader picture of the USSR and its history, as lived by his fellow inmates. The human suffering is blunt and clear - scurvy, starvations, injustice, drownings - but what lingers is a sense of humans' capacity for kindness and boundless talents. Keep Forever, they stamped on his prison files, and Keep Forever is what we must do with these stories.
| Author: Alex Lane |
| Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform |
| Publication Date: Dec 14, 2012 |
| Number of Pages: 158 pages |
| Binding: Paperback or Softback |
| ISBN-10: 1475246897 |
| ISBN-13: 9781475246896 |
