"About Kolyma" gathers autobiographical texts by the Russian writer Varlam Shalamov. Unlike in his main work, the "Kolyma Tales," here he writes clearly and without elevating his experiences to the symbolic. As far as his memory allowed or he deemed it appropriate, Shalamov reconstructed what happened to him during the fourteen years of imprisonment in the camps of the Kolyma region (1937-1951). From his own experiences, he derives new, terrifying knowledge about the depths of humanity, about the law of decay as well as the law of resistance against decay. Decades later, he examines this knowledge within himself and interrogates his memory. The texts translated here for the first time allow the reader to directly participate in what Shalamov experienced in the camps and reveal his struggle for self-awareness.