Kolyma Tales - Varlam Shalamov

Tales of the Siberian political convict camps created by Stalin.  Horribly wonderful tales.  Horrific lives recounted an indifferent and matter-of-fact voice that mirrors the indifference that overcomes the convicts in this inhuman environment.  No idealogical or political analysis, though there is an portrait of the bureaucratic and inhuman absurdity of the prison rules and environment.  In a sense it is the logical extension of the absurdity revealed in the biography of Stalin that I read recently.