Bahriany Ivan. The Hunters And The Hunted

New York : St. Martin's Press, 1957. — 245 p.A political prisoner, on route to the grimmest and brashest corner of eastern Siberia, escapes the closely guarded slave train and finds himself in a wild and primitive land. In this remote outpost of Communist Russia are freedom loving nomads who hunt, fish and are apart from the political pressures and terrors that grip other parts of the Soviet Union. Hryhory is found half-dead by the fiercely independent Sirko family and nursed back to health by Natalia, the brave and lovely daughter. It is an idyllic sort of life. The Sirko family teach him to fish at night by torchlight, to capture mountain lions with his bare hands so that the fur is not damaged. And there, instead of being exposed to the brain-washing and slow death at the hands of the NKVD, our hunted prisoner finds love and eventually freedom across the border when he and Natalia escape...