Kolyma Stories [Paperback]

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 Storiesis 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.“As a record of the Gulag and human nature laid bare, Varlam Shalamov is the equal of Solzhenitsyn and Nadezhda Mandelstam, while the artistry of his stories recalls Chekhov. This is literature of the first rank, to be read as much for pleasure as a caution against the perils of totalitarianism.” —David Bezmozgis

“Available only for the last five years in Russia itself, a searing document, worthy of shelving alongside Solzhenitsyn.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review


The book is packed with gems, each complete in itself. Together they form part of a mosaic unlike anything in world literature. A struggle with memory comparable with that of Proust or Beckett, this is a work of art of the highest order by a writer of extraordinary daring and ambition...He resembled Chekhov in his combination of non-judgemental realism with unyielding severity in his view of the human world. &mdashlc