Solzhenitsyn experienced Stalin’s camps first hand having been sent for making derogatory remarks about Stalin in a letter. This novel expresses the true horror and injustice of the labour camps by simply describing one day. A brilliant work that should be read by all to make sure such horrors to do not occur again.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Special Limited Edition Synopsis
A special limited edition of nine classic novels produced to coincide with Weidenfeld & Nicolson's 60th anniversary. Designed by the award-winning advertising agency Fallon with special endpapers commissioned from ground-breaking artists. The endpapers for this title have been designed by James Dawe.
This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Following a typical day in a labour camp, as experienced by prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, we are taken on a harrowing journey into a world where survival is all. We discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book and the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match. Through Denisovich's suffering we experience incarceration, brutality, hard labour and freezing cold - and participate in the struggle of men to survive both the terrible rigours of nature and the inhumanity of the system that defines their conditions of life.
AleksandrSolzhenitsyn was born in 1918 and grew up in Rostov-on-Don. He graduated in physics and mathematics from Rostov University and studied literature by correspondence course at Moscow University. In World War II he fought as an artillery officer, attaining the rank of captain. In 1945, however, after making derogatory remarks about Stalin in a letter, he was arrested and summarily sentenced to eight years in forced labour camps, followed by internal exile. In 1957 he formally rehabilitated, and settled down to teaching and writing. The publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Novy Mir in 1962 was followed by publication, in the West, of his novels Cancer Ward and The First Circle. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 1974 his citizenship was revoked and he was expelled from the Soviet Union. He settled in Vermont and worked on his great historical cycle The Red Wheel. In 1990, with the fall of Soviet Communism, his citizenship was restored and four years later he returned to settle in Russia.
