No Man Is an Island: Three Essays on the Gulag Archipelago
2024 Collection of essays by Imbi Paju, Mart Laar, Eerik Niiles Kross
No Man Is an Island: Three Essays on the Gulag Archipelago. This work is dedicated to the publication of the book Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a book that was published 50 years ago in the West. After Nikita Khrushchev's removal from power, the Soviet regime began to persecute the author. Between 1965 and 1967, Solzhenitsyn completed this book in 146 days while in Estonia, aided and supported intellectually by his friends in an Estonian farmhouse.
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Reviews
"The collaboration between Paju, Laar and Kross is welcome in every way, endeavoring to achieve maximum objectivity and with the somewhat different styles of each author still a consistent discussion of the life of one of the 20th century’s most influential writers."
Aivar Kull
- cultural historian -
"All three authors – Imbi Paju, Mart Laar and Eerik-Niiles Kross – analyze the various aspects and meanings of Solzhenitsyn’s life work his book Gulag Archipelago, creating a superb introduction to this specific masterpiece as well as all of Solzhenitsyn’s writings."
Aimar Altossaar
- Postimees newspaper journalist -
2024
[No Man Is an Island: Three Essays on the Gulag Archipelago]
No Man Is an Island: Three Essays on the Gulag Archipelago. This work is dedicated to the publication of the book Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a book that was published 50 years ago in the West. After Nikita Khrushchev's removal from power, the Soviet regime began to persecute the author. Between 1965 and 1967, Solzhenitsyn completed this book in 146 days while in Estonia, aided and supported intellectually by his friends in an Estonian farmhouse. His spiritual father was the former lawyer Arnold Susi, whom he met in 1945 in the notorious Lubyanka Prison, and who explained to him the fundamentals of Western justice while in these horribly difficult circumstances. The author writes that Susi was the first educated European he had ever met, and without this meeting, he would have remained just a typical Russian writer.
The book No Man Is an Island: Three Essays on the Gulag Archipelago borrows its title from the conception of English classicist John Donne, one that resonates with the universally human message of Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Even prison camp is unable to separate a person from the rest of humanity. Every human being is valuable; the brutal death of any person, the destruction of their creative works, represents a loss to all humankind. In current times, the suffering of Ukraine reminds us of this every day.
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Imbi Paju on kirjanik, esseist ja filmirežissöör. Ta on õppinud kultuuriteadusi, klassikalist laulu ja Helsingi Ülikoolis soome keelt ja sotsiaalteadusi.
Imbi Paju is a multifaceted creator, writer, documentary filmmaker and essayist. Her books have been published in many languages.
