He added:
I’m going to Kolyma to see what it’s like to live in such a place, in such a cemetery. The longest one. Can you love, laugh, shout for joy here? How do you cry, make and raise children, earn, drink vodka, die here? This is what I want to write about. And about what they eat here, how they wash gold, bake bread, pray, cure themselves, fight, bash folks’ heads in… When I land at the airport near Magadan, I read a huge sign: WELCOME TO KOLYMA – THE GOLDEN HEART OF RUSSIA.
Kolyma Diaries (Dzienniki kołymskie) is a record of a journey of a few months through the most remote corners of Siberia. This work is a collection that was written during the reporter’s trip and gradually sent to Gazeta Wyborcza. As Hugo-Bader hitchhikes down the road, he stops in cities and villages that are often deserted. He learns about shatoons, bears that kill people. He talks to gold prospectors. He gets acquainted with a retired military man, who guards a junkyard and assembles motorcycles from found parts. He encounters many other interesting personalities. – I met a genius dog, a talking stone, I found a rejuvenating machine and editor Smoliakov, who passionately plays preferans, even though he doesn’t have hands. I was amongst all of this – the small Polish bug moving on the outskirts of great history – said the author.
Kolyma Diaries is a masterpiece of a reportage. The fact that the oligarch Aleksandr Basanski – a former lieutenant colonel in the Soviet intelligence service – treats Hugo-Bader as a secret agent attests to the skills of the author. Basanski can’t at all believe that he’s dealing with a journalist. “It’s really apparent that you have completed the secret service academy. You’re checking me out all the time” – the Russian says. He sticks with his conviction to the end.
A part of the true Russia, not a mere reflection of this country, was captured in this small book. Russia is present not only in the people and photographs but also in the language. We encounter plenty of Russianisms and their use is a great device. Hugo-Bader smuggles in words, tiny words, whole phrases and he makes us believe that we’re reading this book in Russian. And we understand everything perfectly” (Magdalena Szeliga,
rosyjskaruletka.edu.pl).
Jacek Hugo-Bader (born in 1957) is a reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza. He loves Russia and the former countries of the Soviet Union, in which he spent a total of almost four years. He travelled through Central Asia, the Gobi Desert, China and Tibet on his bicycle. He paddled across Lake Baikal on a kayak. In the winter of 2007 he travelled alone in a Russian off-road vehicle from Moscow to Vladivostok. He described this journey in a collection of reportages entitled White Fever (Biała gorączka). He is the author of the book In the Paradise Valley Among the Weeds (W rajskiej dolinie wśród zielska) which was nominated for the NIKE literary prize. He is co-creator of the documentary Jacek Hugo-Bader. Correspondent in Poland (Jacek Hugo-Bader. Korespondent z Polszy). He has been awarded the Grand Press prize on two occasions (1999, 2003). He has received the main awards of the Polish Journalists Association twice. For White Fever he received an “Amber Butterfly,” otherwise known as the Arkady Fiedler Award in 2010.
Jacek Hugo-Bader
Kolyma Diaries
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Portobello Books, London
Published: 3 April 2014
Trade Paperback, A5
148x210mm, 368 pages
ISBN: 9781846275029
Sources: czarne.com.pl, wyborcza.pl, dziennikwschodni.pl
Edited by: LS
Translated by: Marek Kępa