Künstler der Schaufel

Warlam Shalamov, born in 1907 in Vologda, northern Russia, as the son of an Orthodox clergyman, moved to Moscow in 1924 to study Soviet law. In 1929, he was sentenced to labor camp in the Ural region for counter-revolutionary agitation (Article 58). He returned to Moscow in 1931, where he was arrested for the second time in 1937. This was followed by deportation to the Siberian Kolyma region, known as the cold pole of the Earth. In 1956, he was allowed to return to Moscow, where he died in 1982.

Following "Through the Snow" and "Left Bank," the third volume of the stories from Kolyma is now released. It contains two cycles from Shalamov's monumental work. Once again, he takes the reader into the merciless world of the Siberian camps and tells the story of the defeated. The focus of this third volume is the masterfully depicted world of criminals in the camp, their daily lives, their language, their customs, and their relationship with the political prisoners.