Varlam Shalamov - Last Years and Death

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.

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