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Book Reviewed by:A masterful novel about the search for the truth about a shadowy neighbor represents an epic attempt to rescue history from the brink of oblivion.
In one of the first 21st century Russian novels to probe the legacy of the Soviet prison camp system, a young man travels to the vast wastelands of the Far North to uncover the truth about a shadowy neighbor who saved his life, and whom he knows only as Grandfather II. What he finds, among the forgotten mines and decrepit barracks of former gulags, is a world relegated to oblivion, where it is easier to ignore both the victims and the executioners than to come to terms with a terrible past.
This disturbing tale evokes the great and ruined beauty of a land where man and machine worked in tandem with nature to destroy millions of lives during the Soviet century. Emerging from today's Russia, where the ills of the past are being forcefully erased from public memory, this masterful novel represents an epic literary attempt to rescue history from the brink of oblivion.
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis, one of the leading translators of Russian literature working today. She has translated over 80 works from authors such as Evgeny Yevtushenko, Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrei Sakharov, and Sergei Dovlatov. Bouis, previously executive director of the Soros Foundation in the former USSR, now lives in New York City.
Lebedev’s rich and searing story explores how the oppressive weight of history, especially one that is not acknowledged, can smother the life out of an individual...continued
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(Reviewed by Poornima Apte).
In Oblivion, the unnamed narrator travels to the abandoned uranimum mines on the outer edges of the Siberian taiga to discover the truth about Grandfather II, a family friend who played an important role in his upbringing.
In the race for the atomic bomb in the lead up to World War II, the Allies had effectively secured most of the world uranium ore deposits under their power. The Russians had to come up with a plan to exploit what they could of their own resources. Scattered uranium deposits had been found in remote and inaccessible locations, including Siberia and parts of Tajikistan. The Soviet Union, which at the time had sovereign control over the central Asian country, built their first uranium mine there under government ...
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From the moment I picked your book up...
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Celestine Bohlen, International New York Times columnist and former Moscow correspondent for The New York Times
An extraordinary book that takes readers across Russia's desolate northern landscape and turns up secrets about the terrible legacy of the Soviet gulags, described through evocative, often poetic portraits of people and places.
