Summary :
Divided into three parts, this book consists of a free translation from German into English of Neufeld’s most important writings. The parts refl ect the great variety of Neufeld’s life, his changing self-awareness, the astonishing range of his writings, and the monumental events through which he had lived. The fi rst part, “My Path of Thorns,” is a distinguished, previously unpublished memoir of Neufeld’s interrogation and his fi ve years of hard labour in the gulag. 16 From 1933–9, Neufeld was a gulag inmate, fi rst in an eastern camp double-tracking the Trans Siberian railway and then, improbably, as manager of an NKVD experimental pig farm in the subpolar European north. Neufeld was one of a disproportionately large number of Mennonites torn from their families in tightly knit, religious, Low German-speaking villages and plunged into a strangely unfamiliar Russian-speaking gulag world. Camp life was marked by arbitrary rules, rampant criminality, hunger, untreated maladies, insuperable work norms, brutality, and crass dehumanization. Above all, camp life demanded acquiescence in a camp morality of bogus production fi gures and an anything-goes mindset that shook Neufeld to his core. According to a camp saying approvingly quoted by Neufeld, the gulag rested on foundations of “cursing, connections, and bullshit ( mat, blat i tu􀄞 a ).” Wri􀄴 en with verve and consummate skill, this memoir brings to life the distinguishing features and atmosphere of the gulag during the relatively poor-documented mid-years of its existence, from 1933–9. With candour it documents the muddled state of much of the gulag’s organization at the time and the impossible moral dilemmas that confronted inmates on a daily basis. A treasury also of Mennonite piety, it captures Neufeld’s struggle with his identity and faith in a world of unbounded evil that off ered few moral options. Illuminating of the life of the gulag and of one of its smallest but best-known ethno-religious minorities, Neufeld’s memoir, with its fresh images, deep understanding, and powerful emotions, merits inclusion with signifi cant camp memoirs in the broader literature.

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