{"product_id":"9781612190099","title":"Faithful Ruslan","description":"\u003cb\u003eUnavailable for twenty years, this harrowing allegory of obedience to authority is esteemed as “one of the defining literary texts of the post-Stalin period.” (\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSet in a remote Siberian depot immediately following the demolition of one of the gulag’s notorious camps and the emancipation of its prisoners, \u003ci\u003eFaithful Ruslan\u003c\/i\u003e is an embittered \u003ci\u003ecri de coeur\u003c\/i\u003e from a writer whose circumstances obliged him to resist the violence of arbitrary power. “Every writer who writes anything in this country is made to feel he has committed a crime,” Georgi Vladimov said. \u003ci\u003eDissident\u003c\/i\u003e, he said, is a word that “they force on you.” His mother, a victim of Stalin’s anti-Semitic policy, had been interred for two years in one of the camps from which Vladimov derived the wrenching detail of \u003ci\u003eFaithful Ruslan\u003c\/i\u003e. The novel circulated in \u003ci\u003esamizdat\u003c\/i\u003e for more than a decade, often attributed to Solzhenitsyn, before its publication in the West led to Vladimov’s harassment and exile. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA starving stray, tortured and abandoned by the godlike “Master” whom he has unconditionally loved, Ruslan and his cadre of fellow guard dogs dutifully wait for the arrival of new prisoners—but the unexpected arrival of a work party provokes a climactic bloodletting. Fashioned from the perceptions of an uncomprehending animal, Vladimov’s insistently ironic indictment of the gulag spirals to encompass all of Man’s inexplicable cruelty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrom the Trade Paperback edition.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Melville House Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47148213600496,"sku":"9781612190099","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781612190099_p0.jpg?v=1763841821","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781612190099","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}