Between Two Worlds: The Life of a Young Pole in Russia, 1939-46

In 1939 the winds of war swept many citizens of Poland eastward, among them K. S. Karol, then 15 years old. His adventures-schooling in Rostov, the Komsomol, military service, the gulag, comrades and high jinks, amours-give sidelights on Soviet society during the war, although not at its gory vortex. If the narrative, written from memory many years afterward, may here and there embroider, no matter; it has the freshness of youth unburdened with the reflections from later life. This English-language version is "somewhat abridged" from the original published in 1983 in Paris, where Karol is an editor of Le Nouvel Observateur.