Product Description

This is an extraordinary personal testament, the story of one boy's triumph in the face of impossible obstacles. Born with cerebral palsy in Moscow, Ruben Gallego was hidden away in Soviet state institutions by his maternal grandfather, the secretary general of the Spanish Communist Party in the 1960s. His was a boyhood spent in orphanages, hospitals, and old-age homes, a life of emotional deprivation and loss of human dignity. And yet, there is no self-pity here, no bitterness, only an unfailing regard for the truth. Gallego's story is one of neglect and mistreatment but also of shared small pleasures, of courage, of the power of the human will, and of a child's growing fascination with books and the worlds he finds in them. Winner of the 2003 Russian Booker Prize, White on Black is "one of those rare books one can call revolutionary" (Corriere della Sera, Italy).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1013690 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

From Publishers Weekly
To be a crippled orphan anywhere is a sad thing; worst, undoubtedly, in the Third World, but no picnic in the Soviet Union. Gallego, a brilliant boy born with cerebral palsy, with hands and feet so twisted that though he could crawl he could use only his left index finger, was abandoned to state institutions by his grandfather in the 1960s. That he survived this "cruel and terrible" childhood is a tribute to a remarkably strong will. The most atrocious fact of many that readers learn is that eventually, usually at age 15, institutionalized boys, Gallego included, were transferred from children's wards to the "old folks' home," where they lay in their own urine until they died; in one month, seven out of eight perished. Amazingly, Gallego lived to marry, have children and write this extraordinary book of "stories," spare, elliptical, often fierce vignettes centered around remembered figures and events: "a bite of lard, a salami sandwich, a handful of figs, a blue sky, a couple of books, and a kind word." These glimpses of adversity and triumph are quirky, sometimes appalling, often funny and touching without being sentimental. The book won the 2003 Russian Booker Prize and should receive similar acclaim here. (Jan.)
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Review
PRAISE FOR WHITE ON BLACK "This book is today's Gulag Archipelago, a plea to ordinary people not to close themselves off to the truth."--The New York Times "An uncomplaining account of the harshest imaginable upbringing, it is a tribute to the resilience of the individual will." (The New Statesman (London) )

"Mr. Gallego''s little book is deeply moving, his triumph a joy to read about." (Washington Times )

About the Author
RUBEN GALLEGO was separated from his family at the age of one. He lived in Russia and worked as a computer specialist until 2000, when he was reunited with his mother. Gallego now lives in Freiburg, Germany. 

Marian Schwartz has been translating Russian contemporary and classic fiction, history, criticism, fine arts, and other nonfiction for three decades. She is the principal English translator of Nina Berberova and translated Edvard Radzinsky's best-seller The Last Tsar She was the translator on four volumes in Yale's Annals of Communism series and translated twenty full issues of Russian Studies in Literature. Her latest published translations include Yuri Olesha's Envy, Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, and Nina Berberova's Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg, cotranslated with Richard D. Sylvester. Schwartz has won several prizes for her translations and was awarded an NEA Translation Fellowship in 1988.