For the centenary of the Russian Revolution, a new edition of the
Russian Nobel Prize-winning author's most accessible novel
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an undisputed classic of
contemporary literature. First published (in censored form) in the
Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, it is the story of labor-camp inmate
Ivan Denisovich Shukhov as he struggles to maintain his dignity in the
face of communist oppression. On every page of this graphic depiction of
Ivan Denisovich's struggles, the pain of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's own
decade-long experience in the gulag is apparent--which makes its
ultimate tribute to one man's will to triumph over relentless
dehumanization all the more moving.
An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced-work
camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most
extraordinary literary works to have emerged from the Soviet Union. The
first of Solzhenitsyn's novels to be published, it forced both the
Soviet Union and the West to confront the Soviet's human rights record,
and the novel was specifically mentioned in the presentation speech when
Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. Above
all, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich establishes Solzhenitsyn's
stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dostoevsky,
Turgenev, Tolstoy" (Harrison Salisbury, The New York Times).
This unexpurgated, widely acclaimed translation by H. T. Willetts is the
only translation authorized by Solzhenitsyn himself.
