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The Industry of Souls: A Novel, by Martin Booth
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The remarkably powerful and critically acclaimed novel that was chosen as A New York Times Notable Book of 1999 and shortlisted for The Booker Prize
The Industry of Souls is the story of Alexander Bayliss, a British citizen arrested for spying in the Soviet Union in the early 1950's. Eventually freed from the gulag in the 1970's, he finds he has no reason to return to the West-he has become Russian in everything but birth.
Now, on the day of his 80th birthday, Russia has changed. Communism has evaporated. In the aftermath, information has come to light that Alex is still alive. This moving story weaves together the events of Alex's life, exploring this momentous day, his harrowing past in the camp and his life in the village. And it ends with his having to make a personal choice, perhaps for the first time in his life, and the climax is shattering.
- Sales Rank: #1268513 in Books
- Published on: 2000-10-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.28" h x .68" w x 6.52" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
From Library Journal
As he wakes up on his 80th birthday, Alexander Bayliss, a British citizen who spent 25 years in a Soviet gulag after being charged with espionage and the next 20 years in the Russian village of Myshkino, has a major decision to make: Will he remain in the village or return home to England, where his family has just discovered that he is alive? Through flashbacks to the gulag, Booth (Opium: A History) introduces Bayliss's fellow workers, from Dimitri, who always has a story or a joke, to Yuli, who is terrified that the coal mine they are working in will collapse, to Kirill, the leader who points Bayliss to Myshkino and in doing so portrays the human side of gulag life. Interspersed with this material is an account of Bayliss's experiences in Myshkino detailing the people he has come to know and how the collapse of the Soviet Union affected them. Relying on strong character development, this intriguing work illuminates the social, political, and economic changes the downfall of communism brought to Russia while remaining readable, personal, and suspenseful. Highly recommended.AJoshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Briton Alexander Bayliss is a survivor of the Soviet gulag who, upon his release after more than 25 years of labor in an Arctic coal mine, has settled in the small Russian village of Myshkino. There he has eked out a second life as a respected teacher and unassuming witness to the evils of the fallen system. Now, on his eightieth birthday, he must make a choice, perhaps his first in half a century. As Bayliss makes his way through his day, he reflects upon the beauty of the Russian countryside, his camaraderie with his fellow slave laborers, and the many courtesies the people of Myshkino have shown him. Booth is a storyteller of rare power who makes the unbearable understandable. For example, Bayliss reflects upon the time he and his work unit were detailed to help dig a 20,000-year-old mammoth carcass out of an ice pack; the similarities between the powerful beast and the fallen empire are unstated but unmistakable. This was a finalist for last year's prestigious Booker Award; it's hard to imagine how any of the other nominees could have been better. George Needham
From Kirkus Reviews
Much published in England but known here only for his nonfiction (Opium: A History,1998), Booth offers a gripping taleshort-listed for the Bookerof the gulag and one mans escape from it. In 1952, on business in Dresden, the university-educated Englishman Alexander Bayliss is picked up by the Soviets, charged with suspicion of espionage against the USSR, found guilty, and sentenced to 25 years of labor as a coal miner somewhere above the Arctic Circle. The reader gets this information from a much later timegathering it from Baylisss own lengthy reminiscence on his 80th birthday as he makes his usual rounds of the Russian village of Myshkino, where, for 20 years, ever since the end of his sentence, he has lived with the devoted young woman Frosya and her car-mechanic husband, Trofim. What led him to the village wont be told here, as neither will the cause of the special relationship between Baylissor Shurik, his Russian nicknameand young Frosya, who transparently reveres him. Why the villagers also venerate him, however, can be toldthe reason being that even after a quarter-century in the gulag, he doesnt hate them, insisting that they did nothing to him. For Shurik, an intelligently avuncular Solzhenitsyn-figure who only occasionally becomes overbearing, there is an absolute difference between political abstractions and real people. And, as he reminisces back to the suffering, cruelty, terror, and death he suffered or witnessed, its the people who were there with him that one will remember: Titian, the math professor now imprisoned; Avel, who flew MIGs against Yankees; and, most especially, Kirill, the leader of Shuriks work squad, whose boundless humor, generosity, friendshipand terrible deathwill explain why Bayliss/Shurik chooses to devote whats left of his own life to humble Myshkino. By turns terrifying and moving, an observant book likely to be long remembered. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A true masterpeice
By Basil F. Gavin
The author has presented us with the life story of an elderly man all of us, sooner or later, can readily identify with. Almost in bodhisattva form, this character will inspire and nourish our soul as no other book I have read.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Friendship and love where you'd least expect them
By Stephanie
A touching book about friendship in the gulags (work camps) of Siberia, The Industry of Souls by Martin Booth is a wonderfully written novel with an unforgettable story that examines the most basic human emotions of love and hope during the worst of times.
The book follows the life of Alexander Bayliss, a British citizen who is wrongly accused of espionage by the KGB and is sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in Siberia. The book centers around the friendships and bonds he makes with the six other men in Work Unit 8. Even in the terrible living and working conditions of the gulag, the seven men help and support each other in order to maintain their optimism and sanity. Almost all were betrayed into the gulags either by their acquaintances or by their country. Over the course of two decades, they find understanding and trust once more in their comrades.
This book explores themes of love, friendship, and freedom in the unusual setting of the gulag. The setting helps bring out the themes because it is often only during the worst of times when one truly comes to appreciate what they would normally take for granted. Martin Booth delves deep into these themes, showing us that even in the most hellish places, love and hope can exist.
In this way, what I found to be the most touching was the friendship between Shurik (Alexander's nickname) and Kirill, the leader of Work Unit 8. The events that unfold bring the reader to ponder the value of a true comrade. They make the reader wonder how far they would go for a friend.
At times the book is heartbreaking. Other times, the book leaves the reader furious at the injustices of Communist Russia. However, I don't believe Martin Booth was trying to reveal the corruption that put fear in the lives of all Russians during that period of time. I think his main message was that even in bad times and in the midst of such corruption, true friendship can help you pull through. As Shurik said himself, "I owed... my allegiance to my comrades, not to my country. Friends are more important than flags." A thoroughly compelling read, the reader is drawn into the story and doesn't want to leave. I give this book five stars.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Friends and Flags
By Andrew Karbovsky
The most attractive trait of the novel is the figure of its protagonist, Alexander Bayliss (Shurik), a British citizen who was arrested in the early 1950s, charged with espionage against the USSR and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in the GULAG. After release he settled in the small Russian village of Myshkino and spent 20 years there. He does not succumb to the vicissitudes of life, does not cherish plans of sweet revenge, being a real stoic both in his day-to-day life and in critical situations. One of the Orthodox Christian saints told once: save your life and hundres will be save near you. Shurik saw a lot of crying injustice in his long life but did not become inbittered. Working as a schoolmaster in Myshkino he taught his pupils simple but ultimate truths (such as 'if you kill something of beauty, two ugliness spring up in its place') thereby moulding their souls. And now he receives his 'bread upon waters' in genuine respect and love of all inhabitants of Myshkino and neighbourhood. The depiction of characters of Russian people is lively and convincing, that is not rife in books of foreign authors.
But I have to mention some discrepancies in the novel. Shurik and his comrades of Work Unit 8, as a lot of people during Stalin's rule, were condemned for petty causes or even denunciations. But it is noticeably less probable that not one of them was released during amnesties of 1950s and 1960s. The life of Russian people depicted in accordance with ubiquitous foreign views that everything was bad in Soviet Russia. It is ridiculous to read about used condom of some Party leader having in mind licentiousness of modern men of power. Sometimes the author uses rather hackneyed Russian phrases (such as - we 'pretended to work whilst the Party pretended to pay us') or even vulgar anecdotes.
Nevertheless the main idea of the book - friends are more important than flags - is true and extremely important.
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