This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia & shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match in a world where survival is all. Here safety, warmth & food are the first objectives. Reading it, you enter a world of incarceration, brutality, hard manual labour & freezing cold
- & participate in the struggle of men to survive both the terrible rigours of nature & the inhumanity of the system that defines their conditions of life.