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 | Cannibal Island: |
ADDITIONAL REVIEWS: "Often the details in a single instance sear more deeply than the most gruesome tally of large numbers....Werth describes in rich detail the transformation of the vast western Siberian wilderness into the dumping ground for millions of 'de-kulakized' peasants, minority groups from the borderlands, the socially marginal, criminals, and the utterly innocent....These 'special settlements' are a part of the gulag's least-known history. Werth corrects that in plain and clear language, leaving the story to convey its own excruciating eloquence."--Robert Levgold, Foreign Affairs "Nicolas Werth's book is the stuff of nightmares. It recounts the fate of 6,000 'special settlers', rounded up in Moscow and Leningrad in 1933 and sent to the island of Nazino in the Ob River in Western Siberia."--Carla King, Irish Times "[A] chilling piece of historical reconstruction"--London Review Bookshop leaflet ENDORSEMENTS: "Perhaps it is not surprising that Nicolas Werth, the French historian who cowrote The Black Book of Communism, has decided in Cannibal Island to return to an incident he merely mentioned in that vast book. He was right to do so: in its way, this small, brilliant work, the description of a single incident, is every bit as powerful a condemnation of Communist ideology as the Black Book itself."--Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History "In this gripping new work, Nicolas Werth documents the horrifying story of the forced deportation of 'socially-dangerous elements' from Moscow and Leningrad to the forbidding island of Nazino. With the use of dramatic new documents from previously classified Soviet archives, he chronicles for the first time in English the atrocities that unfolded on 'cannibal island.' This is an absorbing, indeed chilling tale of savagery, highlighting in microcosm the brutal realities of Stalinist socialism in action."--Lynne Viola, author of The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements "Werth has as solid a command of the Soviet-era archival documentation as anyone. But while he lays out a synthetic, institutional panorama of a segment of Soviet bureaucracy, he can write at the same time a story full of suspense, in a crisp and lucid style. He certainly does both with shattering effect in his Cannibal Island."--Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland File created: 9/23/2008 | |
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