This article aims at introducing to the Latin-American readers an exemplary witness of the Gulag, the Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, and his work A World Apart, a poignant account of life in the soviet camps, and at the same time a lucid analysis of the political terror established by the communist regime's repressive system. A reading of A World Apart is proposed, in view of the discussions about the concept of totalitarianism, as well as the contemporary research on testimony in literature (particularly in Latin America and Poland). Which issues are raised by Herling-Grudziński's text in that context?
Gulag; testimony; twentieth-century Polish Literature; Gustaw Herling-Grudziński's A World Apart