Now in its first complete English translation, this masterpiece chronicles life in a Soviet gulag, based on the author's own years in a USSR prison camp.Kolyma Stories is a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature,an epic array of short fictional tales reflectingthe fifteen years that Varlam Shalamov spent in theSoviet Gulag. This is the first of two volumes (the secondto appear in 2019) that together will constitute the firstcomplete English translation of Shalamov's stories andthe only one to be based on the authorized Russian text.Shalamov spent six years as a slave in the gold minesof Kolyma before finding a less intolerable life as a paramedicin the prison camps. He began writing his accountof life in Kolyma after Stalin's death in 1953. His stories areat once the biography of a rare survivor, a historical recordof the Gulag, and a literary work of unparalleled creativepower, insight, and conviction.
