A World Apart (book)

A World Apart (book)

A World Apart: The Journal of a Gulag Survivor (Polish: Inny świat: zapiski sowieckie) is a memoir written by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, combining various literary genres: novel, essay, psychological portrait, as well as sociological and political dissertation. It was first published in 1951 in London in the English translation by Andrzej Ciołkosz. In the Polish language, the book was first published in London in 1953, then in Poland by the underground press in 1980, and officially in 1988.

The book takes its Polish subtitle, zapiski sowieckie (the Soviet Notes), from the Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel, Notes from the House of the Dead, which expresses Herling's convictions that the World War II concentration camp environment does not belong to the normal, human world, but is a type of sick and distinctive civilisation which is contrary to all previous human experience.