I don’t know what it is about books about writers, but I find them fascinating. My favorite so far is perhaps Vasily Grossman and his book about the Soviet writers workshop built on Lake Sevan in Armenia. At about the same time, on an island in Lake Nicaragua, a group of Latin communist writers established a writers commune called Solentiname. Nicaragua – Armenia; lost places along great lakes where people dreamed of a world that was not vicious and sad. A utopia just over the horizon; after the next poem. Armenia turned into a hell for the writers of Lake Sevan – the Gulag; assassinations; disappearances. For the writers of Solentiname, they experienced a moment of power, followed by a moment of freedom, and are currently experiencing their own Stalinist nightmare at the hands of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo – a poet herself featured in this book. Proving that while history does not repeat itself, it does rhyme. And beware of those who preach utopia – the Gulag awaits.