The Road of Bones

By Ville Ropponen and Ville-Juhani Sutinen

Finlandia Prize nominated impressive travel book from present-day Russia, exploring the brutality at the forced labour camps of the Gulag system. What was the Gulag? Who were the ones sent to the camps and what was their life like? The Road of Bones describes the experiences of those who ended up as victims to the fierce political power and the violence at the Soviet prison camps. Russia experts Ville Ropponen and Ville-Juhani Sutinen travelled thousands of kilometers from Karelia to Siberia and the Far East Kolyma in search of monuments, cemeteries and ruins of prison camps that once covered vast areas of the Soviet Union. They talked to people who had come into contact with the Gulag, each with their own story to tell, and backed up the work with literary references. During their road trip, the grim past kept pushing into the present, which resulted in a multi-layered, engaging and popular read. ”We’ve been driving for about half an hour when the car stops abruptly in a forest glade, as if it had died. The trees here are short, not because we’re so far north, but because the surrounding forest was felled to provide building material and firewood for the camp. At this latitude, it takes a larch three hundred years to grow to maturity, and only seventy-plus years have passed since the days of the Gulag.”  

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About the author

Experienced travellers and nonfiction authors Ville Ropponen and Ville-Juhani Sutinen decided to join forces and embark on a journey of a thousand kilometers, ranging from Karelia to Siberia and the Far East Kolyma for their newest publication.Ville Ropponen (b. 1977) is an author, journalist, and translator. He has written nonfiction, essays, poetry, and prose, generally focusing on cultural minorities, ecological themes, modernization, and the effects of globalization. His works often deal with the former territories and legacy of the Soviet Union. As a journalist, Ropponen has travelled through Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus, the United States, Iraq, and Bangladesh. He has translated works from Russian, including Viktoria Lomasko’s graphic novel The Second Russia (2019).Ville-Juhani Sutinen (b. 1980) has written novels, poetry, and nonfiction. He addresses a wide range of themes in his works, including the recent history of the United States and Russia, human migration in the past and present, homelessness, and the importance of places and landscapes in remembering the past and creating meanings for the present. Many of Sutinen’s works are based on his travels around the world; cities he has lived in include Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Berkeley. In addition, Sutinen has translated classics by renowned authors such as Virginia Woolf and Mark Twain. He also works as a photographer.