Saturday Afternoon Cigar

Rocky Patel Edge Sumatra.

I started a new book today: Ward 7 by Valeriy Tarsis, published in 1962, 159 pages.  It is out of print.

So far: hilariously dark.

It is a fictional story that reflects the author's experience in a Soviet mental hospital.  He, like nearly all other "patients," was sane.  The less than sane character, Karen, was one who was always happy.  He "sang or talked cheerfully to himself, convinced he was living in the best of all possible worlds..."

Patient Almazov says of Karen: "For the first time in fifty years I see a really happy man in our God-forsaken country."

I have rarely been disappointed by books written by former Soviet political prisoners.  They are excellent story-writers, with rich personal experiences and relationships, who uniquely find light in the dark.