Voices from the Gulag ― Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria

Survivors remember the back-breaking labor, beatings, inadequate food and clothing, and institutionalized torture of the concentration camps of communist Bulgaria in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The inmates, though drawn from various social, professional, and economic backgrounds, shared a common fate: beaten by secret police, charged with fictitious crimes, and shipped to Lovech, a rock quarry. There are also accounts from the guards, commandants, and bureaucrats of Lovech. Todorov is director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche, France. Zaretsky teaches at the University of Houston. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Born in Sofia, Tzvetan Todorov left Bulgaria in the early 1960s and moved to Paris, where he established himself as a literary theorist, historian of ideas, and world-renowned essayist. He is a director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the author of numerous books. Several of these have been translated into English, including:Facing the Extreme (1996), A French Tragedy (1996), On Human Diversity (1993), andThe Conquest of America (1984).

Robert D. Zaretsky is an Associate Professor at the University of Houston where he holds a joint appointment in the Honors College and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages. He is the author ofNimes at War: Religion, Politics, and Public Opinion in the Department of the Gard, 1938–94(Penn State, 1995), which won the 1997 Hans Rosenhaupt Memorial Book Award of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.