Sketches of the Criminal World

“A man becomes a beast in three weeks, given heavy labour, cold, hunger, and beatings.”

Under Stalin, poet and journalist Varlam Shalamov faced fifteen years of brutal enforced labour in the gold and coal mines of Kolyma. These years formed the basis of his life’s work, Kolyma Tales, a monumental collection of short stories that took him nearly twenty years to complete. While Shalamov’s work is often compared to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s, Shalamov refuses to sentimentalise his harrowing experiences or engage in ideological battles. The irredeemable exists, he insists, and this new volume centres on the seemingly boundless displays of immorality he witnessed in the camps and the mines.

Author and translator Donald Rayfield speaks about the second volume of his new translation of Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, Sketches of the Criminal World, in conversation with Pushkin House’s Rafy Hay.

This podcast episode was edited and produced for Pushkin House by Rafy Hay. Listen here on the Pushkin House website, on Apple podcasts, or via Acast.