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This novel tells the true story of Gerald Amster. Amster was an American who was caught smuggling drugs in the USSR. This would be wrong and stupid today, but even more so in Amster's day. He then proceeds to tell of his "trial", and life in a Russian prison. This tale is told using great writing, with few flaws. It is a rare and wonderful book.
If you manage to find this book, pick it up. You will enjoy it, and will want others to read it. Amster's tale is well told, funny, touching, and thought-provoking all at once. It is a highly recommended and rare find that comes with my highest praises.
I found it full of humourous incidents (probably more so for the reader than for Amster), very valid and fair in its take on Russian culture, and almost always credible. All this adds up to a very entertaining read. Amster is a semi-sympathetic character at best, but this doesn't detract from the book, because the portrayal we see adds to its credibility: no one would make up some of the experiences he details, yet he does not portray his captors as being particularly better or worse than he. He and they are just *there*, and have to deal with one another, and all the expected variety of human qualities is present.
The only persons I can possibly think of who would not like this book would be those who hope to use it as a source for the brutality of the Gulag system. Solzhenitsyn's _Gulag Archipelago_ would be the far better choice in that case; Amster definitely wasn't in the Four Seasons Hotel, nor even a Motel 6, and his life was definitely unpleasant, but he wasn't dragged to a torture chamber every day. Moreover, as an inmate in a 'foreigners'' camp, he didn't see a clear picture of the mainstream Gulag system of the times. Probably the two above points are correlated to a degree.
For everyone else, this one is worth a search. Adventure travel fans in particular will probably enjoy it even though it's not precisely in that genre.
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