From Library Journal
As he wakes up on his 80th birthday, Alexander Bayliss, a British citizen who spent 25 years in a Soviet gulag after being charged with espionage and the next 20 years in the Russian village of Myshkino, has a major decision to make: Will he remain in the village or return home to England, where his family has just discovered that he is alive? Through flashbacks to the gulag, Booth (Opium: A History) introduces Bayliss's fellow workers, from Dimitri, who always has a story or a joke, to Yuli, who is terrified that the coal mine they are working in will collapse, to Kirill, the leader who points Bayliss to Myshkino and in doing so portrays the human side of gulag life. Interspersed with this material is an account of Bayliss's experiences in Myshkino detailing the people he has come to know and how the collapse of the Soviet Union affected them. Relying on strong character development, this intriguing work illuminates the social, political, and economic changes the downfall of communism brought to Russia while remaining readable, personal, and suspenseful. Highly recommended.AJoshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Briton Alexander Bayliss is a survivor of the Soviet gulag who, upon his release after more than 25 years of labor in an Arctic coal mine, has settled in the small Russian village of Myshkino. There he has eked out a second life as a respected teacher and unassuming witness to the evils of the fallen system. Now, on his eightieth birthday, he must make a choice, perhaps his first in half a century. As Bayliss makes his way through his day, he reflects upon the beauty of the Russian countryside, his camaraderie with his fellow slave laborers, and the many courtesies the people of Myshkino have shown him. Booth is a storyteller of rare power who makes the unbearable understandable. For example, Bayliss reflects upon the time he and his work unit were detailed to help dig a 20,000-year-old mammoth carcass out of an ice pack; the similarities between the powerful beast and the fallen empire are unstated but unmistakable. This was a finalist for last year's prestigious Booker Award; it's hard to imagine how any of the other nominees could have been better.
George Needham
