2003-06-15
... ? The Observer | Review | The coldest circle of hellThe story needed to be told and Anne Applebaum tells it with admirable attention to detail, proper restraint and a generally successful attempt not to allow horror to drive out objectivity. But, as I read Gulag, I experienced what is, for me, a rare emotion. Normally I cannot open a book without wishing that I had written on the same subject. With Gulag, I felt from start to finish, 'Rather her than me'. Does she, I wonder, still have nightmares about the atrocities committed by Stalin between the opening of the first forced labour camp on Solovetsky Island in 1923 and the virtual end of the system 30 years later?
