neural_lauren_unreal's review against another edition
5.0
"I learned that spite is the last human emotion to survive. A starving man has only enough flesh to feel spite — he is indifferent to everything else."
mariaklingsheim's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Violence, Murder, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Police brutality, Physical abuse, and Animal cruelty
Moderate: Torture and Misogyny
Minor: Suicide, Pedophilia, Rape, and Sexual harassment
azure_dawn's review against another edition
4.0
I just read a bunch of stories from there and then watched a lecure on it. Pretty cool.
simonmee's review against another edition
4.0
Today we had easy work, the kind they normally reserve for criminals.
Pretty grim.
Pretty grim.
desirosie's review against another edition
3.0
Man, I need to take a break from the Gulag and the Holocaust. Maybe some post-apocalyptic fiction to cheer me up?
ipb1's review against another edition
4.0
Makes [a:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's|19771050|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1574793149p2/19771050.jpg] [b:One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich|852538|One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1580834282l/852538._SX50_.jpg|838042] sound like a bit of a picnic. Grim.
bookwisp86's review against another edition
5.0
"I didn’t know the people who slept at my side. I never asked them questions. There is an Arab saying: ‘He who asks no questions will be told no lies.’ That wasn’t the case here. I couldn’t have cared less if I was being told lies or the truth. The camp criminals have a cruel saying which is even more appropriate here – it expresses a deep contempt for the questioner: ‘If you don’t believe it, take it as a fairy tale.’ I neither asked questions nor listened to fairy tales."
What a depressing but good read. A collection of stories about the miserable conditions in Soviet forced-labor camps during the Stalinist regime. The author himself spent 20 years in the camps and managed to survive. Many did not. A look into endless toiling despair and how people barely survived it while still trying to remain human.
What a depressing but good read. A collection of stories about the miserable conditions in Soviet forced-labor camps during the Stalinist regime. The author himself spent 20 years in the camps and managed to survive. Many did not. A look into endless toiling despair and how people barely survived it while still trying to remain human.
impressionblend's review against another edition
4.0
Dark, bleak, and soul-crushing. I have a hard time reviewing books like this, and they always leave me with questions of whether there is a limit to the horrible things humans will do to each other, and how do we let these things happen?
"Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of ‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people together and gave birth to their friendship, then the need was not extreme and the tragedy not great. Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friends."
"He didn't want to die here in the frost under the boots of the guards, in the barracks with its swearing, dirt and total indifference written on every face. He bore no grudge for people's indifference, for he had long since comprehended the source of that spiritual dullness. The same frost that transformed a man's spit into ice in mid-air also penetrated the soul. If bones could freeze, then the brain could also be dulled and the soul could freeze over. And the soul shuddered and froze - perhaps to remain frozen forever."