Shocking, but laced with wry humour, Vladimir Pereverzin's remarkable story is of an ordinary man whose confortable life is upended. Refusing to give false testimony against Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he is plunged into lengthy, brutal incarceration in Russia's nightmarish prisons and penal colonies, including some in which political prisoner Alexei Navalny was held. Vividly told in this skillful translation, Vladimir's ultimately uplifting memoir was first published in Russian in 2013, but, given new laws enacted in Russia to punish those who oppose its ongoing 'special operation' in Ukraine, it is, if anything, even more topical today.
