Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov was a twentieth-century Russian poet, memoirist and short story writer, the main body of whose work reflects the profound effect of the seventeen years he spent in the Stalinist Gulag, including fourteen years in the notorious camps of Kolyma in the Russian Far East. Never part of the dissident movement that gave fellow ex-convicts, notably Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, international renown and a huge readership, Shalamov was ill-served by the piecemeal publication of his most significant work, Kolymskie rasskazy [Kolyma Tales, first edition, London: 1978]. Finally published in full in 1992, Kolyma Tales, six collections of short stories depicting life in the Gulag, has gained a …
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Citation: Young, Sarah J.. "Varlam Shalamov". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 November 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12074, accessed 21 November 2024.]
