The sorrow and the pity of Shalamov's Kalyma Stories

I'm still not sure how to interpret the organization of the stories in Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Stories, ed. and tr. by Donald Rayfield (NYRB - 2018). The volume contains 3 "books" - the first being Kolyma Stories, the 2nd (which I'm reading now) called. A 2nd volume is forthcoming w/ an additional 3 "books." Rayfield dutifully includes a date at the end of each story - all of which are in the 1950s and 60s. I don't know, however, if these dates are of composition or publication - in fact, I don't know how many of these stories were published in VS's lifetime (he died in about 1970); not sure if he had 6 books of stories published in his lifetime, or posthumously, or in fact ever. I'll look further into this muddle. All that said, in the 1st "book" all of the stories or sketches are set in the region of Kolyma, where VS served 6 horrible years in one of the Arctic mining prisons; the stories from the book are universally powerful and horrifying, excellent as fiction and as testimony, and eachspare, simple, some very short just a page or two; none of the stories involves much human interaction, friendship, love, politics - it's all about survival in the worst of conditions. The 2nd volume is also set in the Kolyma region and involves prisoners and Stalin-era prison camps, but in this section many of the stores involve interactions at a hospital (VS served the remainder of his sentence, about 8 years, in a medical setting - a much better assignment despite its injustice); some of the stories involve geological exploration in the region - not sure if this has anything to do w/ VS's life. We see, however, that every facet of life - the hospital, the geological expeditions (usually in search of potential sites for mines) depend on prison labor. One unusual story in The Left Bank, and one of my favorites so far, The Academician, tells of a journalist - in his 60s or so, beat up and old-fashioned - assigned to interview and hot young Soviet academic involved in the the space race in the early days of satellites. The scientist is haughty and contemptuous toward the elderly journalist, whom VS presents with great feeling and pity - one of the few stories in this collection about an interaction among people outside of a prison setting. The story ends w/ a twist, which somemay see coming and which I won't divulge, that's powerful if a bit old-fashioned - harking back to de Maupassant or O.Henry, and not the kind of ending that, say Chekhov would ever write - but, still, it works, and adds to the sorrow that pervades this entire collection.