White on Black by Ruben Gallego
white on black
Adam Mars-Jones Guardian review
Complete Review's review plus other review summaries (and links)
Words Without Borders: The Online Magazine for International literature
Robert Skidelsky in Newstatesman
White on Black belongs to a distinctively Russian genre, with no exact equivalent in the west. It is not reportage, but neither is it fiction. Perhaps the best word for it would be "witness". It is divided up into a series of short stories, each recounting a single incident. These stories make no claim to historical truth. Their target is essential truth - pravda. They are icons of suffering and resilience, cruelty and kindness. This has nothing to do with "literature" in the western sense, with its omnivorous curiosity and surface polish, but it has a beauty of its own. Lovers of the later Tolstoy and of Solzhenitsyn will appreciate its value.Weblog The Middle Stage review
Willing and Disabled Moscow Times
Book cover photo of young and further down adult
profile of Ruben Gallego by Kate kellaway
profile
In searching for these reviews came across these two chess games:
Joan Fluvia-Poyatos vs. Ruben Gallego
Ruben Gallego vs Gerard Welling
...
In the middle of the night I listened to one episode and was drawn back to "Cancer Ward".
This hits the button for me and is a great help as I read the Marxist stuff.
Rejecting the ideology of his youth, Solzhenitsyn came to believe that the struggle between good and evil cannot be resolved among parties, classes or doctrines, but is waged within the individual human heart. This Tolstoian view and search for Christian morality was considered radical in the ideological atmosphere of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. Solzhenitsyn assumed the role of an observer as the great 19th-century Russian writers who prided themselves on their truthful depiction of the society. He became a chronicler, witness whose own experiences are part of the way to approach truth and judge. Thus he could shift from a "neutral" third-person narrative to a direct transcription of the unuttered thoughts of his protagonists, use kaleidoscopic sequences of events and numerous personal testimonies, and extrapolate from individual case histories. "Where can I read about us? Will that be only in a hundred years?" says a woman in Cancer Ward.
Also reminds me something Leonard Cheshire said : '..the little things...not the big', though what the exact words were I can't remember.
This on Cancer Ward from a medical perspective
posted by Adfero Affero @ 5:37 PM
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