White on Black by Ruben Gallego
'I'm a hero. It's easy to be a hero. If you don't have hands or feet, you're either a hero or dead.' So begins Ruben Gallego's shocking account of his bleak life in the Soviet Union's network of hidden orphanages.Ruben was born in Moscow in 1968 with severe cerebral palsy. His grandfather, the head of Spain's Communist Party, found his disability unbearable and banished him to a state orphanage, telling Ruben's mother that her son had died. Communist Russia's much vaunted welfare system claimed to leave no citizen behind. But as Ruben moved from home to home he lived the sinister reality behind the myth. He faced freezing dormitories, rotten food, the cruelty of carers, and the belief that his mother had abandoned him. Above all he suffered severe neglect, as a 'non-ambulant' in homes which often lacked one single wheelchair, and in which people were left lying, and dying, in their own filth.But Ruben was tenacious. With his disability, survival was already a way of life. And the occasional kindnesses shown him - a fig, chocolate, a conversation - fed his passion for freedom.From within he finds the strength to escape his fate, marry, become a parent and, eventually, track down and reunite with his mother.
'A painful story of the handicapped abandoned in Soviet orphanages' -- Publishing News 20050812 'Bleak, but kinda heroic' -- Venue (Bristol Time Out) 20050812 'Groundbreaking' -- New York Times 'Extraordinary' -- TLS 'A remarkable, episodic memoir of shocking neglect.. Gallego's indomitable spirit in the face of adversity, and his extraordinary way with language, reminded me of Christie Brown's My Left Foot". Albeit with Vodka thrown in.' -- Bookseller 'Brilliant ... extraordinary ..the glimpses of adversity and triumph are quirky, sometimes appalling, often funny and touching without being sentimental' -- Publishers Weekly 'A short, sharp stunner of a memoir ...a rich, haunting and deceptively simple work' -- Kirkus 'This book is today's Gulag Archipelago", a plea to ordinary people not to close themselves off to the truth' -- Naum Nim, editor of Index on Censorship 'He writes with bitter elegance -- and keeps his strange, custom-built sense of humour' -- Observer 'He tells his life in a series of vignettes, as terse and self-contained as his prose style ...Yet Gallego isn't self-pitying. Instead his book exudes a sort of tough wonderment.' -- Financial Times 'An extremely moving account of the triumph of the spirit and intellect over unimaginable suffering' -- Sainsbury's Magazine 'An incredible and moving autobiographical novel' -- Andrey Kurkov, New Statesman
Ruben Gallego was separated from his family as a baby and raised in orphanages and old-age homes, unaware that his mother was still alive and his grandfather was a prominent member of the Spanish Communist Party. He worked as a computer specialist in Russia until 2000, when he was reunited with his mother. He now lives with her in Germany.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780719561368 |
| ISBN 10 | 0719561361 |
| Title | White on Black |
| Author | Ruben Gallego |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | John Murray Press |
| Year published | 2006-01-16 |
| Number of pages | 176 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |