One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Yevgeny Yevtushenko (Introduction), Eric Bogosian (Afterword)

Overview

One of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia, this novel is both a graphic picture of World War II work camp life and a testimony to the human spirit. Revised reissue.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451228147
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/04/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918, a year after the Bolsheviks stormed to power throughout Russia. He studied at the University of Rostov and served with distinction in the Russian Army during World War II. In 1945, he was arrested and imprisoned in a labor camp for eight years because he had allegedly made a derogatory remark about Stalin. Released in 1953 after the death of Stalin, he was forced to live in Central Asia, where he remained until Premier Khrushchev’s historic “secret speech” denouncing Stalin in 1956. Rehabilitated in 1957, Solzhenitsyn moved to Ryazin, married a chemistry student, and began to teach mathematics at the local school. In his spare time he started to write. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Four years later the Soviet Union revoked his citizenship, and he was deported. Solzhenitsyn settled in Vermont in 1984, but eventually returned to Russia in 1994, after the collapse of communism. He died in 2008.

Read an Excerpt

REVEILLE WAS sounded, as always, at 5 a.m.--a hammer pounding on a rail outside camp HQ. The ringing noise came faintly on and off through the windowpanes covered with ice more than an inch thick, and died away fast. It was cold and the warder didn't feel like going on banging.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
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Editorial Reviews

A masterpiece...Squarely in the mainstream of Russia's great literary traditions.

The Nation

He presents the most Karakaesque situations, the most gruesome details in a matter-of-fact manner, without exaggeration or indignation. His is a calm, stylized narrative by an extremely observant and intelligent man.-- Books of the Century; New York Times review, April 1963

Marc Slonim

Cannot fail to arouse bitterness and pain in the heart of the reader. A literary and political event of the first magnitude.”
–New Statesman

“Stark . . . the story of how one falsely accused convict and his fellow prisoners survived or perished in an arctic slave labor camp after the war.”
–Time

“Both as a political tract and as a literary work, it is in the Doctor Zhivago category.”
–Washington Post

“Dramatic . . . outspoken . . . graphically detailed . . . a moving human record.”
–Library Journal

From the Publisher