A Man With An Agenda

It's 1953 and in a Siberian prison camp there is no justice and little hope of surviving the year, let alone a full sentence. A plan of escape forms between three men Grigori and Sergei, who have ties to the Russian mafia, and Roman, a man who was sentenced as a dissident after telling a Stalin joke at a party.

Roman is the central character here, he is essentially an innocent in the camp and gets into trouble for leaving food offerings for a domovik - a domestic protective spirit - but there seems to be more to the myth then people suspect...

When the opportunity strikes, they make it out of camp, but with little food and thousands of miles of snow-laden wilderness between them and civilization they will have to make terrible sacrifices.

This book is brutal, quick and terrifying, and made all the more so by the fact that it is grounded in reality. These prison camps existed and few prisoners survived them. Many inmates were guilty of little more than the mild political joke that Roman made at the wrong party. The horror elements compliment the nasty reality perfectly. This is absolutely worth seeking out.