Michael Cassidyne's promotion of Through Hell, to Heaven and Back!, his translation of a work by "Vassily Solitsin" (pseud.) (BCBW, Summer 2004), is at least doubly misleading. According to this translator/publisher, he spent ten years working with the original Russian-language manuscript, composed in 1954 by an author whose real name Cassidyne chooses not to disclose. In fact, this epic had previously been published in book form in 1950, ascribed to an author whose identity was then only thinly disguised.

Through Hell... is a translation of Tri dnia i tri nochi v zagrobnoi zhizni [Three days and three nights in the afterlife], by "Pantes Kiroson," an anagrammatic pseudonym not difficult to decipher given the place of publication - Crescent Valley, BC, the former Sons of Freedom stronghold. The Russian original is accessible in at least two BC libraries (see Outlook Online and UBC Library's on-line catalogue).

Jack McIntosh
Richmond