The concept of camp narratives rather than Holocaust narratives or Gulag narratives is based on
the assumption that literary accounts of camp experiences share common traits aesthetically as
well as thematically. The book presents readings of camp literature that underscore the
similarities between texts about Soviet gulag camps Nazi camps and about other camp
experiences. While literature about Nazi concentration camps still serves as a point of
reference for camp narratives in the same way that the Holocaust serves as a point of reference
for other genocidal operations socialist labor and penal camps have become transnational lieux
de mémoire in their own right since 1989. This volume intends to provide a theoretical frame as
well as an overview of several important European camp literatures and case studies of iconic
camp narratives and to take a comparative and transnational perspective on the genre of the
camp narrative.
