“YA AMERIKANKA” – An American Writer in Russia

Writers are always looking for settings they can use to create atmosphere, deepen character, build suspense and heighten realism. Today Joyce Yarrow will take us on a tour of some of the locations in Russia where she set scenes from her latest book, The Last Matryoshka.

I was staring at a collection of books and journals on exhibit at Vladimir Central Prison Museum. Each book represented a human being – a writer – a poet – an essayist - who had occupied one of the cells just a few yards away from where I stood, shivering all night long on a thin wooden plank mere inches from the concrete floor.

I had come to Vladimir Central (still a working prison today) to research the criminal sub-culture of the Russian vory—but I had not known that Alexander Solzenitzen was imprisoned here –or that Stalin’s own son had occupied a cell.