yarn along:: october, 2024: my prison memoir era

Well, not exclusively prison memoirs; there are also concentration camps, gulags, nuclear holocaust survivors...

I occasionally take a deep dive into a realm of books.  Lately, I've turned again and again to stories of dissidents, prisoners, and saints who have spent time in concentration camps or Gulags or suffered immensely at the hands of others.  It began last year with A Song for Nagasaki and continued with the biography of Fr. Roman Braga, which I read with my book group, and led me to the audiobook version of The Hiding Place.  Then I remembered the two books we have about Mother Maria Skobtsova, and just finished the second.  Now, three more books have fallen in my lap (actually, they were delivered by our postal worker): Patriot: A Memoir, Notes from Underground, and Notes from a Dead House.

Fr. G and I were fortunate to hear Yulia Navalnaya speak at a dinner the other night; her quiet strength and determination reverberated even louder than her beautiful words.  He and I had watched the documentary Navalny together immediately following Alexei Navalny's death, and my knowledge of his death suffused the entire film with overwhelming pathos.  It was brutal.  So when the release of her husband's book was announced at the dinner, I knew I would immediately buy a copy.  I did.  And also some more Dostoyevsky while Patriot was in my cart.  And I pulled the third volume of The Gulag Archipelago from our shelf.  It's time to finish it.  Oof.  Such pointless suffering.

But!   I keep returning to this particular genre because it's filled with so much spiritual hope, despite the physical hardships.  Each tale forces me to answer the question, "How would I cope in this situation?" and bolsters the idea that strength, deep faith, and character can come from immense hardship.  I don't know how I would measure up, and am deeply grateful that I haven't been tested.  Yet.

I'm just finishing the second sleeve of the Field Sweater I started this summer, and need to rip out the hem and add a few inches.  Cropped tops let in too many drafts.

As soon as I've finished the sweater, I've got some of my Viola hoard to make Kumiko socks.  If the intriguing construction is fun, I foresee several pairs in my future.

What are you reading? Knitting?  

EDITED: Navalny's book was reviewed in the current issue of The Economist.  The full review is behind a paywall, but I heartily concur with the following:

“Patriot” carries echoes of works by political prisoners in Russia and elsewhere. Much like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The House of the Dead” (1862), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” (1973) and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963), “Patriot” transcends its place and time. Its value lies not in what it tells you about the cruelties of Mr Putin’s regime, but in what it reveals about the human spirit.