The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1
An Experiment in Literary Investigation

I went for a walk this afternoon, strolling around the unfamiliar student district near Chosun University. It was pleasant just to be out and about, looking at stuff, breathing in air lightly spiced with the peculiar sewage-and-market smells of urban Korea. As I often do, I stopped off at a café, wh......more

One of the most compelling non-fiction texts I've ever read. I naively picked this up after reading One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovitch thinking it would be a longer version of a similar concept. Instead, it turns out this mighty work is half well-researched investigation into the processing of......more

This is not an easy read, and nor was it ever meant to be. It was originally written in Russian for Russians, and the odd sensibilities and colloquialisms that irritate many of my fellow Anglophones reflect this fact. It's extremely dense, and I probably won't get to the other four parts in the near......more

20 Jan 2018 I read this about 1973-4. What an incredible and incredibly depressing history of the Soviet Gulag. But it was an Evil Empire shattering document. The USSR was just history less than 20 years later! Impossible to know at the time. But excellent to appreciate now. Major changes CAN happen far fa......more

Absolutely terrifying was how Jordan Peterson put it. He also likened what transpired under Lenin and Stalin as the worst things to happen in the 20th century, and that is really saying something. Author Arthur Koestler called this time period a intellectual Holocaust. You might be tempted to think......more