One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Solženicyn Alexandr (2015)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, translated by Ralph Parker in Penguin Modern Classics, brings the daily struggle for survival in a Soviet gulag into harsh focus. This brutal and shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. A piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup becomes vitally important, while a book is an incredible luxury and a nail, piece of string or single match can offer ingenious possibilities. Safety, warmth and food are the first objectives in a world of incarceration, brutality, hard manual labour and freezing cold, where men struggle to survive both the rigours of nature and the inhumanity of the system governing their lives. Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), twice decorated for his service on the front during the Second World War, was arrested in 1945 for making derogatory remarks about Stalin and sent to a series of brutal Soviet labour camps in the Arctic Circle, where he remained for eight years. Released after Stalin’s death, he worked as a teacher and published this novel with Nikita Khrushchev’s approval in 1962, to huge success. His later works Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago were less well received by the Soviet authorities, and shortly after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn was deported from the USSR. After twenty years in exile, he returned to Russia in 1994. Readers who enjoyed this novel may also like Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. As the Sunday Times wrote, it is “a blow struck for human freedom all over the world” and “gloriously readable.”