A cracking good read

摘要

This novel tells the tale of two brothers in post-war Russia who fall in love with the same woman before both are imprisoned in a Siberian labour camp.Although the book is only 196 pages long, it packs a powerful punch as it walks the reader through the violence, chaos, deprivations and inhumanity that characterised the daily life of a political prisoner in Stalin's Russia. A searing indictment of a brutal regime, it is also a story about love, hope and, ultimately, the triumph of the human spirit.