This particular book reflects the first-hand account of Suren H. Oganessian’s arrest, imprisonment, and escape from the Soviet Union’s gulag system during portions of the 1930s and 1940s. His reflections during those harrowing times were handwritten in private journals from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s, which was when Hairenik (an Armenian language weekly newspaper in Boston) published his writings in a serialized format. Oganessian’s work caught the attention of historians, academics, and intellectuals during its initial print run but was limited to an Armenian-literate audience.