Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7768 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-16
• Released on: 2005-03-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 188 pages

Amazon.com
Solzhenitsyn's first book, this economical, relentless novel is one of the most forceful artistic indictments of political oppression in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The simply told story of a typical, grueling day of the titular character's life in a labor camp in Siberia, is a modern classic of Russian literature and quickly cemented Solzhenitsyn's international reputation upon publication in 1962. It is painfully apparent that Solzhenitsyn himself spent time in the gulags--he was imprisoned for nearly a decade as punishment for making derogatory statements about Stalin in a letter to a friend.

Review
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich yields, more than anything else, a beautiful sense of its author as a Chekhovian figure: simple, free of literary affectation, wholly serious."--The New Republic

Review
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich yields, more than anything else, a beautiful sense of its author as a Chekhovian figure: simple, free of literary affectation, wholly serious."--The New Republic

Customer Reviews

An awesome expression of life.
I find it interesting to sometimes ponder, just how extreme can humanity go? What conditions can we put ourselves in and through and still come out on the other side? Solzhenitsyn takes this question and puts it into literary form, if only for the period of one day. Thankfully, unlike the author, many of us will never have to endure something brutal as the Siberian gulag.
The book follows the psychological perspective of Ivan Denisovich, who is a "zek"(prisoner) who has been condemned to a 10 year stretch for merely having the misfortune of becoming a POW. You get to imagine the siberian cold(they are allowed to not work if it hits -40, which even when it does they just lie and force them to work anyway). You see the internal politics which are part of the means of survival, and just what a piece of hard bread and a bowl of cold, wet oats can mean to a man that is already in hell. It's also fascinating to see how he can still has pride and dignity in his work while trying to make sure each brick is set properly while under the intensity of forced labor. Make no mistake about it, this is a book with strong masculine tones, that i'm suprised doesn't enjoy more popularity under such a banner. The book itself is only around 130 pages or so, and can be read quickly by the determined reader, who would be cheating themselves not to read it.

You will see bleakness yet signs of life in the Gulag.
If you have never read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, then perhaps you should. It is not a thriller. It will not keep you on the edge of your seat.

It will hold you captive however when you realize that for those caught in the Gulag system, every day, moment or second was one lived on the edge, and fraught with danger. The myriad of little details could only come from one who had lived under this system.

You can feel the hunger and desperation in the book, when one man goes missing at the work-site, his fellow prisoners wondering how it will all shake out, and will they all be punished.

The Captain's story is especially poignant. Once a man of power and prestige, now a Zek like the rest. When he is taken to the cells at the stories end, we like the Zeks do not know why or for what infraction. Although likeable he will soon be forgotten as the focus is on getting through the next day.

The book is mild, as it only shows one day, and is not even horrific. Rather it is tense and terse.

Cheers.

The Lifting of Stalin's Shroud.
This book; moving, inspiring, touching, humbling, pathetic. What Stalin did to his fellow countrymen has surely cast him into the lower pits of hell. This book illuminates only a single day of the hell on earth he put his comrades through. The characters strive to make it through the day without dying. They strive to live through the monotony of the toneless days. The horrific lives these people endured is nothing short of a miracle. The pages of this book shall stay with you long after you place it on your shelf.