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Shalamov paints a world where people eat boot grease; where they have calluses on their chests from pushing wagons; where they would murder a fellow prisoner just to get a trial and escape labor in the mines for a while; where men won’t move from a fire when somebody was murdered nearby, as they don’t have the energy to move away from the warmth, just like they don’t have the energy to take a bath or disinfect. A world were such disinfection is merely an ineffective but obliged formality, “creating additional torment for the prisoner.” A world where people smear their faeces in an open wound to get an infection to escape labor by being admitted to hospital, or break an arm or a leg on purpose, for the same reason, or eat a gob of spit from someone who was infected by tuberculose – even though it wasn’t a guarantee for anything, as there were also bureaucratic limits to how many people could be off work and in hospital. Hospital patients did receive better food, but were often too ill to eat it. The food, bureaucratically, obviously, couldn’t be given to other, starving prisoners. A similar illustration of the absurd logic of the system, is Shalamov’s story of a very sick man, Soldatov, who was treated in hospital until he was well enough to be shot. Add to that the ironic tragedy that non-political prisoners – i.e. real criminals – generally had it much better, and got much shorter sentences.

I will leave you with some more quotes, quite a lot. They serve a double function: as a reminder for myself, but I also hope they will do the book justice, and convince you to pick up this human masterpiece.

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Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It. ( )