Varlam Shalamov

After 15 years working in Russian labor camps for his counterrevolutionary activity, Varlam Shalamov wrote many volumes of poetry, including Ognivo (Flint, 1961) and Moskovskiye oblaka (Moscow Clouds, 1972). Severely weakened by his years in the camps, in 1979 Shalamov was committed to a decrepit nursing home north of Moscow. Following a heart attack in 1980, he dictated his final poems to the poet A. A. Morozov. In 1981, he was awarded the French PEN Club’s Liberty Prize; he died of pneumonia in 1982. Sketches of the Criminal World is available now from NYRB Classics.