Marian Schwartz w/ Gabrielle Page-Fort, BETWEEN Pr*son AND FREEDOM

Translator Marian Schwartz discusses her work on the memoir Between Pr*son and Freedom: Memoir of a Soviet Dissident, which documents the early life of Russian journalist and human rights activist Alexander Podrabinek as he and other dissidents fearlessly fought against the Soviet Union. She is joined alongside editor Gabriella Page-Fort.

This thrilling memoir documents the early life of Russian journalist and human rights activist Alexander Podrabinek as he and other dissidents fearlessly fought against the Soviet Union.

Between Pr*son and Freedom chronicles Alexander Podrabinek’s deeply personal recollections of his early life fearlessly opposing the injustices of the Soviet Union. He vividly describes his turbulent journey from silently protesting at Pushkin Square as a teenager to his exile in a brutal Pr*son camp for publishing Punitive Medicine. Between Pr*son and Freedom is a powerful tribute to the Russian dissidents, desperately loyal to their country and to each other, as they fought for freedom and justice, all while cunningly evading the KGB’s nearly successful efforts to break—or K*ll—them.

Through his personal experiences, the dissident reality unfolds as an onslaught of surveillance and false accusations, corrective labor camps and exile, and a consistent disregard for basic human freedoms. In this captivating story about standing against tyranny, Podrabinek captures the spirit of the dissident movement, the painful intersections between personal and political in a dissident’s life, and the solidarity that kept the resistance moving forward.

Prize-winning translator Marian Schwartz has been publishing classic and contemporary fiction and nonfiction for fifty years, from classics of the Russian canon like Anna Karenina, A Hero of Our Time, and Oblomov to modern-day classics like Mikhail Shishkin, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose March 1917, Book 4, has won a 2024 Foreword INDIES award. Her translation of Dmitry Glukhovsky’s play The White Factory was staged at London’s Marylebone Theatre, for which it was awarded five Offies. Fall 2025 will see the UK publication of her translation of Mikhail Shishkin’s masterpiece Maidenhair and the launch of Between Pr*son and Freedom: Memoir of a Soviet Dissident, in which Russian journalist and human rights activist Alexander Podrabinek recounts his early life in the Soviet-era dissident movement. For more info, go to www.marianschwartz.com

Gabriella Page-Fort is executive editor at HarperOne, publishing work that expands our understanding of ourselves and the world. Her titles include New York Times bestselling It Begins with You by Jillian Turecki, Zora Neale Hurston’s never before published novel The Life of Herod the Great, internationally bestselling inspiration by Paulo Coelho (in Margaret Jull Costa’s translation), poet Sholeh Wolpe’s selection and new translation of 12th century mystic poet Attar’s The Invisible Sun, and Susan Muaddi Darraj’s PEN/Faulkner Prize shortlisted novel, Behind You Is the Sea. She is co-owner of Hex Enduction Records and Books in Lake City.

Purchase your copy of Between Pr*son and Freedom here.

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