Varlam Shalamov completed six cycles of stories, well over a thousand pages, inspired by his eighteen years as a slave in the Gulag's farthest northern camps. The tales are graphic, brutal, abrupt—intended, in his words, as “slaps in the face of Stalinism.” In the volume under review, Donald Rayfield has translated the first three cycles; cycles 4 through 6 followed in 2020. Although fame came late to Shalamov (1907–82), his intimate circle was of the highest quality. Released from the Gulag in 1951, he became a close friend of Nadezhda Mandelstam, corresponded with Boris Pasternak, published a few poems, and circulated several of his camp tales in samizdat. He died in Moscow, crippled with Ménière's disease, deaf and almost blind.
During his lifetime, Shalamov as literary artist knew largely scandal. When, in 1966, the Kolyma stories began to appear in the New York émigré venue Novyi zhurnal, randomly ordered...
