A Voice from the Chorus is a powerful and unconventional prison memoir by Andrei Sinyavsky, writing under the pseudonym Abram Tertz. Arrested in 1965 for smuggling his satirical writings out of the Soviet Union, Sinyavsky was sentenced to six years in a forced labour camp. This book, based on letters to his wife, offers a deeply reflective and moving account of his experiences.
Rather than a straightforward chronicle of prison life, A Voice from the Chorus is an extraordinary blend of personal meditations and the fragmented voices of his fellow inmates. Sinyavsky explores themes of literature, art, religion, and the endurance of the human spirit, interwoven with the songs, stories, and conversations of prisoners around him. These raw and often poetic snippets create a “chorus” of voices that illuminate both the horrors and the unexpected moments of humanity within the Soviet gulag system.
Often compared to the prison writings of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, this memoir is both a tribute to the resilience of creativity under oppression and a profound philosophical inquiry into the nature of survival, faith, and artistic expression. First published in 1976, A Voice from the Chorus remains a compelling and thought-provoking testament to one of the darkest periods of Soviet history.
