Kolyma Tales

It is estimated that some three million people died in the Soviet forced-labour camps of Kolyma, in the northeastern area of Siberia. Shalamov himself spent seventeen years there, and in these stories he vividly captures the lives of ordinary people caught up in terrible circumstances, whose hopes and plans extended to further than a few hours. This new enlarged edition combines two collections previously published in the United States as Kolyma Tales and Graphite.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Foreword

Through the Snow

On Tick

In the Night

Carpenters

An Individual Assignment

A 'Pushover' Job

Dry Rations

The Injector

The Apostle Paul

Berries

Tamara the Bitch

Cherry Brandy

A Child's Drawings

Condensed Milk

The Snake Charmer

The Golden Taiga

Vaska Denisov, Kidnapper of Pigs

A Day Off

Dominoes

Shock Therapy

The Lawyers' Plot

Typhoid Quarantine

The Procurator of Judea

The Lepers

Descendant of a Decembrist

Committees for the Poor

Magic

A Piece of Meat

Esperanto

Major Pugachov's Last Battle

The Used-Book Dealer

Lend-Lease

Sententious

The Seizure

An Epitaph

Handwriting

The Businessman

Captain Tolly's Love

In the Bathhouse

The Green Procurator

My First Tooth

Prosthetic Appliances

The Train

The Red Cross

Women in the Criminal World

Quiet

Grishka Logun's Thermometer

Chief of Political Control

The Life of Engineer Kipreev

Mister Popp's Visit

The Theft

The Letter

Fire and Water

Graphite

 

Varlam Shalamov (1907-1982) was a Russian writer, poet, and journalist. He survived 17 years of incarceration in the Gulag for speaking out against the Soviet Union. His collection of essays, Kolyma Tales, details his experiences under the Soviet government.

John Glad (1941-2015) was an American scholar who specialized in Russian literature. He taught Russian at the University of Maryland and Rutgers University. Additionally, Glad was a notable translator of speeches by Mikhail Gorbachev, and also of Russian literature, particularly the works of Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov.