Keep Forever

ebook

By Aleksandr Sokolenko

cover image of Keep Forever

Sign up to save your library

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

   Not today

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Download Libby on the App Store Download Libby on Google Play

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:

Library Name Distance
Loading...

In the freezing nights of a labor camp, fifty prisoners "settle in like herring in a barrel, tightly nuzzled next to each other, and someone among them would cover the rest with clothing". And then the night-time storyteller begins his tale.
Aleksandr Sokolenko's four true stories of life in the Soviet camps detail a world of baffling catch-22s, but also of intense community. From farm work to timber-driving, wrestling marmots to runaway brides, the daily reality captivates.
Vivid characters fill the pages: the aged merchant Semyonov's rich life history and wry acceptance ("At least here, they can't arrest you"); the thief-king who tries to break free from his followers; the high-society orphan who turns barbering into an art; and the inept, vicious Captain Ivanov. Stepping back to narrate their stories as well as his own, Sokolenko offers us a broader picture of the USSR and its history, as lived by his fellow inmates.
The human suffering is blunt and clear - scurvy, starvations, injustice, drownings - but what lingers is a sense of humans' capacity for kindness and boundless talents.
Keep Forever, they stamped on his prison files, and Keep Forever is what we must do with these stories.

Keep Forever