Rating: 
Summary: MAGNIFICENT
Review: Another reviewer has written that the English translation of these stories pales besides the Russian original. If that is so, I wish I could read Russian, because the stories in the English translation are among the best I have ever read. This book, tales of life in the Soviet GULAG, stands shoulder to shoulder with Tadeusz Borowski's THIS WAY FOR THE GAS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, which is composed of tales of life in Auschwitz, as the finest examples I have read of stories of man's inhumanity to man told in such an understated fashion that, once read, they are unforgettable. Shalamov was a genius.
Rating:
Summary: MAGNIFICENT
Review: Another reviewer has written that the English translation of these stories pales besides the Russian original. If that is so, I wish I could read Russian, because the stories in the English translation are among the best I have ever read. This book, tales of life in the Soviet GULAG, stands shoulder to shoulder with Tadeusz Borowski's THIS WAY FOR THE GAS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, which is composed of tales of life in Auschwitz, as the finest examples I have read of stories of man's inhumanity to man told in such an understated fashion that, once read, they are unforgettable. Shalamov was a genius.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book butchered by terrible hack during translation
Review: By simple count John Glad chose to through out about 15% of actual words from the Shalamov book (Compare "On Tick" for example if you know Russian and English). Without those words that "translator" obviously considered unnecessary book of great literature became mediocre exercise in horrors of Gulag. What a hatchet job! What a shame! If anyone can point me to a decent translation, I'll appreciate it.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: Horror sells, and Nazi horror sells more than Soviet horror, probably because of its proximity to the Western hemisphere in terms of both location and demographics. That explains why there are so many more books about the Holocaust than about the Gulag. Most Holocaust literature is personal experiences and dry documentaries: very little is readable and even less is of any literary value. As far as books on the other side of the Iron Curtain go, only a few are known to the Western world - Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago the most famous. It is good and informative but one could hardly call it literary.
Kolyma Tales on the other hand is a masterpiece of literature. Shalamov is a genius: what he captures with bare emotionless words is worthy of a thousand pictures. His simple, objective and evocative style is reminiscent of Chekhov. His descriptions of nature (for example, the description of the "dwarf cedar" tree in "A pushover job") are superb, only Chekhov's are as good.
There are some passages in these stories that made me weep, not by what they were but how they were about it (apologies to Roger Ebert). "Dry Rations" is the best story in this book: look out for the monologue where the narrator's friend talks about their life after release; and the amazing description of what happens after their work quota is unfulfilled. Some other good stories are "A pushover job" and "Lend-lease". There are many more.
To be sure, the quality is inconsistent: some of the stories, especially those about jailors etc, are under par. Also the translation though quite decent, is not up to the mark - I'd have liked original Russian words instead of loose English translations in quotes, for example. But this is still an outstanding piece of work, one of the best reads you'll find anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: Darkest Evil Exposed
Review: I first read Shalamov's book many years ago as a teenager and have never forgotten it. Now I live and work in the former Soviet Union, not far from the site of the camp where Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned, but a very long way from the Kolyma, which Solzhenitzyn himself said was the "pole of suffering". I see the effects of the old system in people every day - the emotional, psychological, moral, spiritual catastrophies that mar individual's lives even today in 1999. Read Shalamov's book and think quietly.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read
Review: I have only read this book once, but I know this is one I'll be reading over and over again for the rest of my life. This is a wonderful book, both sad and occasionaly humorous. The short stories of gulag life will draw you in like nothing else, and you won't be able to stop until you finish the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Emotionless raw vignettes, terrible translation
Review: It took me awhile to get into these stories because they're so emotionless, Stoic, devoid of feeling and humanity. Most people are used to reading books or stories about bad periods of time like this where the characters still hang on to hope of being rescued or returned to the outside world, people who are loyal to their friends and relatives, people who can still discuss things like books or music, people who love one another and help one another to keep going in the midst of such inhumanity. This is a stark contrast; for example, Shalamov's wood-cutting partner Garkunov is murdered for his beautiful white sweater which his wife sent him because he wouldn't give it up as a stake in a meaningless game of cards, and all he can say is that he'll have to find a new wood-cutting partner. I did a paper in a Modern Russian Lit class in college, comparing and contrasting these stories with the writing of Solzhenitsyn, and the contrast is stunning. Shalamov is more bitter and emotionless because he spent more time in the GULAG, in worse camps, was treated worse, was there earlier on, in the Thirties, when things were more awful than they were when Solzhenitsyn was arrested in 1945, conditions were worse, and the people he was surrounded by were nasty ingrates, or else he had no time to become friends with them since many were worked to death within days or even mere hours of their arrival in Kolyma. The zeki here have lost all hope and have no time to sit around dreaming of a return to the outside world, writing secret stories, discussing Marx, Luther, Engels, and Pushkin, hiding eating utensils in their boots, and being nice to domesticated animals who wander into the camp. Even the dead don't get any respect; in one story two inmates lift the rocks off of a man who has recently died so they can get his nice clothes. And who needs emotions or character development when there are haunting images like lice-filled sweaters moving all by themselves, friendly stray dogs being murdered for their meat and fur, and a man being shot presumably dead for trying to escape and having his hands cut off for fingerprints, a man who later returns to the camp dazed and confused, holding his bloody stumps against his body?Some of Shalamov's beliefs about certain elements in camp are suspect, or just plain wrong. He had his life saved by people in the Medical Section twice, and so portrays the Medical Section and camp doctors as angels and saviours here, people who were loving and kind, who kept very sick and emaciated prisoners from going back to slave labour by lying about their conditions. But most of the time, things were just the opposite. Many doctors signed death sentences and sent sick emaciated people back out to be worked or frozen to their deaths. Shalamov says that most of the women in camp were prostitutes. Prostitution was declared a crime, but of the few women in the Kolyma, not a huge percentage were prostitutes. Many women had relationships with male prisoners, for love and comfort, or with people in the camp administration, for better treatment and living conditions, but not all women did that. I agree that the criminals in camp, both male and female, were nasty people without many morals, but to say that most of the career criminals wanted their sons to be criminals too and their daughters to be prostitutes? Keeping young boys for pederasty on a widespread basis? Men allowed to sleep with whomever they wanted, but women being shunned if they slept with non-criminals? The "prostitutes" frequently traded off to new criminal owners? Shunning or beating their kids if they didn't want to be criminals and prostitutes themselves? Thieves raping girls as young as three? Most of the male criminals gay, speaking in feminine voices, and having female nicknames? This seems too fantastic and exaggerated to be true. And if most of these male criminals were gay, why were they having such healthy sex lives with women? The transliteration is all over the place; sometimes the Kh sound is transliterated as Kh and sometimes as X, like in Xvostov and Mixial (i.e., Khvostov and Mikhail). Sometimes there's a ya and then ia, sometimes yu and then iu, no feminine endings on last names, and a man named Chris. Khristofer and Khristian (Khristiyan) are Russian names, but Chris (or Khris) is not a Russian nickname. There are also a few last names transliterated incorrectly, like Pugachev as Pugachov and Nikishev and Nikoshov. Last names with the root ending in ch, sh, or shch, like Khrushchev or Gorbachev, always end in ëv or ëva, not ov. It looks sloppy and misleading. I also noticed two typos--"ment" instead of "element" and "surround" instead of "surrounding." John Glad also doesn't use any of the special GULAG terminology, like tenner (ten-year sentence), Black Mariya or Stolypin Car (special vehicles used to transport prisoners), zek (prisoner), zechka (female prisoner), or dokhodyaga (very emaciated prisoner on his or her last legs; what was called a Muskelmann in the Nazi camps). There's just an untranslatable feeling and image conjured up with those words, and using English equivalents isn't as powerful or evocative. All of the famous prisons have "Prison" after their names; all of the other GULAG writings I've read just called them, for example, Lefortovo or the Lubyanka. You know it's a prison; you don't need to belabour the point. And nowhere else have I seen the worst prison called Butyr; it's Butyrskaya, the Butyrki, or Butyrki. I can't believe this shoddy hack job was nominated for an award; I'm just "Glad" he wasn't one of my professors.
Rating:
Summary: Emotionless raw vignettes, terrible translation
Review: It took me awhile to get into these stories because they're so emotionless, Stoic, devoid of feeling and humanity. Most people are used to reading books or stories about bad periods of time like this where the characters still hang on to hope of being rescued or returned to the outside world, people who are loyal to their friends and relatives, people who can still discuss things like books or music, people who love one another and help one another to keep going in the midst of such inhumanity. This is a stark contrast; for example, Shalamov's wood-cutting partner Garkunov is murdered for his beautiful white sweater which his wife sent him because he wouldn't give it up as a stake in a meaningless game of cards, and all he can say is that he'll have to find a new wood-cutting partner. I did a paper in a Modern Russian Lit class in college, comparing and contrasting these stories with the writing of Solzhenitsyn, and the contrast is stunning. Shalamov is more bitter and emotionless because he spent more time in the GULAG, in worse camps, was treated worse, was there earlier on, in the Thirties, when things were more awful than they were when Solzhenitsyn was arrested in 1945, conditions were worse, and the people he was surrounded by were nasty ingrates, or else he had no time to become friends with them since many were worked to death within days or even mere hours of their arrival in Kolyma. The zeki here have lost all hope and have no time to sit around dreaming of a return to the outside world, writing secret stories, discussing Marx, Luther, Engels, and Pushkin, hiding eating utensils in their boots, and being nice to domesticated animals who wander into the camp. Even the dead don't get any respect; in one story two inmates lift the rocks off of a man who has recently died so they can get his nice clothes. And who needs emotions or character development when there are haunting images like lice-filled sweaters moving all by themselves, friendly stray dogs being murdered for their meat and fur, and a man being shot presumably dead for trying to escape and having his hands cut off for fingerprints, a man who later returns to the camp dazed and confused, holding his bloody stumps against his body? Some of Shalamov's beliefs about certain elements in camp are suspect, or just plain wrong. He had his life saved by people in the Medical Section twice, and so portrays the Medical Section and camp doctors as angels and saviours here, people who were loving and kind, who kept very sick and emaciated prisoners from going back to slave labour by lying about their conditions. But most of the time, things were just the opposite. Many doctors signed death sentences and sent sick emaciated people back out to be worked or frozen to their deaths. Shalamov says that most of the women in camp were prostitutes. Prostitution was declared a crime, but of the few women in the Kolyma, not a huge percentage were prostitutes. Many women had relationships with male prisoners, for love and comfort, or with people in the camp administration, for better treatment and living conditions, but not all women did that. I agree that the criminals in camp, both male and female, were nasty people without many morals, but to say that most of the career criminals wanted their sons to be criminals too and their daughters to be prostitutes? Keeping young boys for pederasty on a widespread basis? Men allowed to sleep with whomever they wanted, but women being shunned if they slept with non-criminals? The "prostitutes" frequently traded off to new criminal owners? Shunning or beating their kids if they didn't want to be criminals and prostitutes themselves? Thieves raping girls as young as three? Most of the male criminals gay, speaking in feminine voices, and having female nicknames? This seems too fantastic and exaggerated to be true. And if most of these male criminals were gay, why were they having such healthy sex lives with women? The transliteration is all over the place; sometimes the Kh sound is transliterated as Kh and sometimes as X, like in Xvostov and Mixial (i.e., Khvostov and Mikhail). Sometimes there's a ya and then ia, sometimes yu and then iu, no feminine endings on last names, and a man named Chris. Khristofer and Khristian (Khristiyan) are Russian names, but Chris (or Khris) is not a Russian nickname. There are also a few last names transliterated incorrectly, like Pugachev as Pugachov and Nikishev and Nikoshov. Last names with the root ending in ch, sh, or shch, like Khrushchev or Gorbachev, always end in ëv or ëva, not ov. It looks sloppy and misleading. I also noticed two typos--"ment" instead of "element" and "surround" instead of "surrounding." John Glad also doesn't use any of the special GULAG terminology, like tenner (ten-year sentence), Black Mariya or Stolypin Car (special vehicles used to transport prisoners), zek (prisoner), zechka (female prisoner), or dokhodyaga (very emaciated prisoner on his or her last legs; what was called a Muskelmann in the Nazi camps). There's just an untranslatable feeling and image conjured up with those words, and using English equivalents isn't as powerful or evocative. All of the famous prisons have "Prison" after their names; all of the other GULAG writings I've read just called them, for example, Lefortovo or the Lubyanka. You know it's a prison; you don't need to belabour the point. And nowhere else have I seen the worst prison called Butyr; it's Butyrskaya, the Butyrki, or Butyrki. I can't believe this shoddy hack job was nominated for an award; I'm just "Glad" he wasn't one of my professors.
Rating:
Summary: Kolyma Tales: Powerful tales of the GULag
Review: Kolyma Tales is one of the most important sets of Russian short stories of this century. Varlam Shalamov, the author, provides a searing look at life in Stalin's forced labor system. The stories are well-translated by John Glad, who brings a greater audience to this extremely important 20th century Russian writer. This book outstrips Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" in its ability to show the reader the true horror of the GULag. Shalamov creates a narrator who, although outwardly neutral, reveals the full pathos of a system that killed millions of people, not deliberately, but through its complete indifference to their fate. These stories will linger and stay with a reader for years to come. We can only hope that with the destruction of the Soviet Union, more great writers like Shalamov whose work was silenced will be brought out into the open
Rating:
Summary: Devastating
Review: Kolyma Tales should be required reading in all universities and even high schools, as it demonstrates the horror created by people and even the resilience of the human spirit. Mr. Shalamov truly created an empathic response.
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