excellent read | Without Vodka: Adventures in Wartime Russia

Gripping Read | Without Vodka: Adventures in Wartime Russia | Aleksander Topolski

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	• Without Vodka: Adventures in Wartime Russia Aleksander Topolski Steerforth, 2001 - 386 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

a worthwhile read

As an American interested in Russian affairs, and speaking little Russian- good books are hard to come by. Either translated from Russian, or written by Americans who don't really know what they are talking about- I have yet to read a book that really piqued my interest. Until this one. This book has a many things working well for it- it is written in english by someone who was THERE, it flows smoothly from chapter to chapter,and above all it is interesting. It is sad how little many Americans know about the gigantic country that we have fought for and against throughout history. Russia is amazing, and this book conveys that quite well.

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excellent read

it sounds so strange to recommend a book about such a depressing topic, but I openly admit I loved this book. I couldn't put it down and found myself reading it before I went to work in the morning and thinking about going home at lunch to read more. The pacing was excellent, the author managed to describe boredom without boring the reader to tears.

Topolski is open, honest, and clever in his writing. The reader is engrossed by a strange sense of humor underwritten in every sentence and is repeatedly shocked by the inhumanity and utter stupidity inflicted upon prisoners in the Stalin's USSR.

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Gripping Read

From the first paragraph I was engrossed in the book and transported to another world. Similar in some ways to Angela's Ashes this book added the extra complexity of depicting the complexity of politics and war. The attention to detail and memory are phenomenal. I highly recommend this book.

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Real Life Story Hits Home

This is a chronicle of the early years of WW2 as experienced by a Polish teenager. His arrest, torture and deportation to Siberia is followed by another major adventure in trying to reach the Polish Army in Uzbekistan.
Aleksander Topolski's detailed, thorough descriptions of the people he encountered, the places he passed through and the experiences he endured bring this account alive.
Personally, this book has allowed me to gain a tremendous insight into the experiences of my own father whose story is mirrored by this one.
A highly recommended read for anyone interested in learning about the unbelievable Soviet regime of days gone by.

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An uplifting book

Its a bit incongruous to say this is an uplifting book about such a negative subject as spending 3 years in a Soviet Prison Camps, but it is. Topolski's writing shows how the positives in his make up allowed him to endure such starvation and still find ways to survive. A cliche, but it shows what the human sprit can do when called on. On top of that, the writing is excellent; its interesting and its incredible how he remembered all this in such detail after so many decades. I highly recommend it.

ALEKSANDER TOPOLSKI was sixteen years old on the morning of August 24, 1939, when he was called up for military service. In eight days his native Poland would be invaded by the Germans. Shortly after that, the Russians rolled in under the Hitler-Stalin pact, and when Topolski tried to sneak across the border into Romania, he was captured by Soviet border guards. Thus began a more than two-year-long ordeal through the Soviet Union's outrageously absurd penal system. Writing with an unexpected sense of humor and irony and an almost superhuman capacity for recalling fascinating details, Topolski recounts the fight for survival in the gulag. Mendacious NKVD officers, whimsical pickpockets, ruthless youth gang members, wise political prisoners, Polish patriots, unfortunate Uzbechs and countless other unforgettable characters populate this often raucous odyssey. "But it's not for our brains to ponder these things," someone along Topolski's journey utters, mouthing an old Russian saying, "without vodka you can't figure it out." Ultimately Topolski escapes into Iran to join the Polish 2nd Corps which is being formed there to fight the Germans . . . but that's another story.

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