“A Mind Purified by Suffering”

"A Mind Purified by Suffering": Evgenia Ginzburg's "Whirlwind" Memoirsrepresents the first book on one of Russia's most important classics of Gulag literature. Ginzburg's memoirs of her eighteen-year ordeal through Stalinist concentration camps,Journey into the WhirlwindandWithin the Whirlwindplace her in the company of Russian writers, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov. The contributors address Ginzburg's Gulag experience through various vantage points, covering such topics as: memory, trauma, motherhood, love, survival strategies, and metafictional structures. The volume also provides a history of prison camp writings, capped with her biography, analysis of her correspondence with her son, Vasily Aksenov, and an interview with him.