Solovki or the Diverted Space: Stalin’s Meteorologist by Olivier Rolin and The Journals of White Sea Wolf by Mariusz Wilk

The Solovki Islands are a specific and mysterious territory where the history, geography and metaphysics intersect. The topography of this land, as well as natural phenomena such as « white nights », can illustrate these complicated crossings. The objective of this paper is to study the reflection of this space in the literary works by Olivier Rolin and Mariusz Wilk who situate their texts – Stalin’s Meteorologist and The Journals of a White Sea Wolf – in the Russian Far North. Adopting a geocritical perspective, I try to identify spatial structures in these works in order to understand the meanings that they carry: chaos, diversions et labyrinths.