Last Years and Death
The Western publishers always provided the disclaimer that Shalamov's stories were being published without the author's knowledge or consent. As his health deteriorated, he spent the last three years of his life in a house for elderly and disabled literary workers in Tushino. Shalamov died on January 17, 1982, and was interred at Kuntsevo Cemetery, Moscow.
The book was finally published on Russian soil in 1987, as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policy. Selections from Kolyma Tales are now mandatory reading for high school children in the Russian Federation.
Read more about this topic: Varlam Shalamov
Famous quotes containing the words years and/or death:
“That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
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Babylon! where is thy might? It is gone in the wind.
Happy in death are they only whose hearts have consigned
All Earth’s affections and longings and cares to the wind.”
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