Kolyma Tales

Kolyma Tales or Kolyma Stories (Russian: Колымские рассказы, Kolymskiye rasskazy) is the name given to six collections of short stories by Russian author Varlam Shalamov, about labour camp life in the Soviet Union. Most stories are documentaries and reflect the personal experience by Shalamov. He began working on this book in 1954 and continued until 1973. The book is considered Shalamov's magnum opus as a writer and one of the important works of Russian 20th-century literature. The collections of stories are titled Kolyma Tales, The Left Bank, The Virtuoso Shovelman, Essays on the Criminal World and Resurrection of the Larch.