Against Destiny

By Alexander Dolinin

This fictional account of imprisonment and escape from the Gulag brings the horrors of Stalin's reign of terror to vivid life. A highly decorated infantry captain is unjustly charged with treason,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1601641737
• ISBN13: 9781601641731
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Kunati Inc.
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.3" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Impressive and gritty

This is a rather good novel and I'm surprised to see it only has one review. This is the story of the escape of Sacha Trofimev from the icy grips of the Kolyma gulags to the US via the Bering Strait (I'm not giving away much here as you find out on page 2 that he makes it and that only one of his companions also does. Trofimev is a portrayed as a heroic figure - almost a combination of Dr Zhivago, Nikolai Turbin, Aleksandr Nevsky, James Bond and Marshall Zhukov. A hero of the Great Patriotic War he, of course, gets sent to the gulag on manufactured charges. There, he almost dies but gets restored by the folk medicine of a displaced Chukchi hunter and buddies up with him and a couple of other inmates. The description of life in the Soviet Union and in Kolyma camps has a thoroughly realistic feel. It surely helps that the author is an expatriate (as opposed to, say, the author or the abysmal "Secret Speech") About half the books builds up to the eventual prison breakout and then proceeds to tell the odyssey of the group's progress to their eventual goal. This is a ripping yarn and, in best James Bond style, the exploits of the group and of Trofimev in particular get more and more heroic and far-fetched as the book nears its end. Don't look for depth or subtlety, although there is some introspection and contemplation of alternative courses of action - for example, Trofimev ponders at length staying behind and organizing a resistence movement. What you get is a realistically textured background and feel with, inevitably, prgoressively less realistic but satisfying action.

A gripping escape story, with a wealth of historical detail

This historical novel is the first fictional account of an escape from Stalin's Gulag. Set in the period soon after the Second World War, it tells the story of four ex-soldiers who find themselves in a labour camp in eastern Siberia for political offences. Facing almost certain death from the harsh conditions, they join with an aboriginal prisoner in a daring escape. Pursued by units of the Soviet army, they make their way east towards the Bering Strait, with the aim of crossing it in winter when it is covered with ice. The first part, set in the camp, is gruesome but accurate. The rest of the novel, as the friends make their escape and encounter pursuers, is absolutely gripping--I found it hard to put it down. Along the way, the friends talk about their past--the reader gets a sense of the variety of political reasons why people ended up in Stalin's camps. I won't spoil the reader's pleasure by revealing how the book ends.