Paperback
-
SHIP THIS ITEMChoose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Wednesday, April 3PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
“One of the greatest Russian writers of short stories” chronicles life in a Soviet gulag, drawing on his own years in a USSR prison camp and laying bare the perils of totalitarianism (Financial Times).
Kolyma Stories is a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature, an epic array of short fictional tales reflecting the fifteen years that Varlam Shalamov spent in the Soviet Gulag. This is the first of two volumes (the second to appear in 2019) that together will constitute the first complete English translation of Shalamov’s stories and the only one to be based on the authorized Russian text.
Shalamov spent six years as a slave in the gold mines of Kolyma before finding a less intolerable life as a paramedic in the prison camps. He began writing his account of life in Kolyma after Stalin’s death in 1953. His stories are at once the biography of a rare survivor, a historical record of the Gulag, and a literary work of unparalleled creative power, insight, and conviction.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781681372143 |
---|---|
Publisher: | New York Review Books |
Publication date: | 06/12/2018 |
Pages: | 768 |
Sales rank: | 1,081,071 |
Product dimensions: | 4.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.60(d) |
About the Author
Donald Rayfield is Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary University of London. As well as books and articles on Russian literature (notably A Life of Anton Chekhov), he is the author of many articles on Georgian writers and of a history of Georgian literature. In 2012 he published Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia, which has recently come out in an expanded Russian edition, as have his Life of Chekhov and Stalin and His Hangmen. He was the chief editor of A Comprehensive Georgian-English Dictionary. He has translated several novels, including Hamid Ismailov’s Devils’ Dance from the Uzbek, and Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls (an NYRB Classic).
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
Book 1 Kolyma Stories
Trampling the Snow 3
On the Slate 4
At Night 11
Carpenters 14
A Personal Quota 20
The Parcel 23
Rain 28
Pushover 32
Field Rations 37
The Injector 52
The Apostle Paul 54
Berries 60
Tamara the Bitch 63
Cherry Brandy 69
Children's Pictures 75
Condensed Milk 79
Bread 84
The Snake Charmer 92
The Tatar Mullah and Clean Air 99
My First Death 106
Auntie Polia 110
The Necktie 115
The Golden Taiga 122
Vaska Denisov, Pig Rustler 127
Serafim 131
A Day Off 139
Dominoes 143
Hercules 153
Shock Therapy 157
The Dwarf Pine 167
The Red Cross 170
The Lawyers' Conspiracy 179
The Typhus Quarantine 198
Book 2 The Left Bank
The Procurator of Judea 223
Lepers 226
In the Admissions Room 232
The Geologists 236
Bears 242
Princess Gagarina's Necklace 245
Ivan Fiodorovich 254
The Academician 267
The Diamonds Map 276
Unconverted 283
The Highest Praise 291
The Descendant of a Decembrist 306
Poorcoms 319
Magic 333
Lida 337
Aortic Aneurysm 348
A Piece of Flesh 353
My Trial 362
Esperanto 379
Special Order 387
Major Pugachiov's Last Battle 390
The Hospital Chief 404
The Secondhand Book Dealer 411
On Lend-Lease 427
Maxim 435
Book 3 The Spade Artist
A Heart Attack 445
A Funeral Speech 448
How It Began 462
Handwriting 473
The Duck 478
The Businessman 482
Caligula 486
The Spade Artist 489
Rur 502
Bogdanov 509
The Engineer Kiseliov 514
Captain Tolly's Love 524
The Cross 534
Courses: First Things First 542
The First Secret Policeman 587
The Geneticist 597
To the Hospital 605
June 612
May 621
In the Bathhouse 628
Diamond Spring 634
The Green Prosecutor 642
The First Tooth 688
An Echo in the Mountains 695
AKA Berdy 706
Artificial Limbs, Etc. 711
Chasing the Locomotive's Smoke 714
The Train 726
Notes 735