'A Mind Purified by Suffering'

<p><i>“A Mind Purified by Suffering": Evgenia Ginzburg’s "Whirlwind" Memoirs</i><i> </i>represents 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,<i> </i><i>Journey into the Whirlwind</i> and <i>Within the Whirlwind</i>, place 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.  </p><p><br></p>