Stanislav Aseyev, a native of Donetsk, Ukraine, began his writing career as a novelist, poet, and playwright. In 2015, using the penname Stanislav Vasin and operating in secrecy, he began publishing reports on events in Donbas and in his hometown, which had become the capital of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. His identity was somehow discovered, resulting in his arrest and detention in an unacknowledged Russian prison, where he was kept in isolation and tortured for over two and a half years. His first book describing this experience, In Isolation, contains articles from the period leading up to his arrest, and others written during his captivity. It won the prestigious Taras Shevchenko Prize in Ukraine in 2021. A forthcoming follow-up volume, The Torture Camp on Paradise Street, gives a frank account of his harrowing imprisonment and confronts the reader with the darkest elements of human behavior.