One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel

For anyone who has not yet read anything by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, this particular book is a very good first choice. It's both shorter and less complicated than other of his great works such as THE CANCER WARD and THE FIRST CIRCLE. I read this book in one day sometime during the spring of 1976 and I have never forgotten it. Having read it, I felt shamed for ever having thought myself in any way deprived.

For those who have read this book and who appreciate its testimony to our common human capacity for spiritual triumph in the face of almost unimaginable physical and psychological distress, I'd also highly recommend ALEXANDER DOLGUN'S STORY. Dolgun was a young American living in Stalin's U.S.S.R. who in 1948 was picked up by the MGB, the secret police, and carted off first to prison and then prison camp. He spent eight years as a prisoner and was, according to Solzhenitsyn, the only person the great author ever knew to have survived detension in the infamous Sukhanovka.

I had to get this book for some college history class that I took, and didn't get around to reading it untill months after I was supposed to. Once I picked it up, it was hard to put down. There's something inspiring about it, as well as frightening. A good insight into the scary Soviet era.

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is an incredible book. The book takes place in a Siberian Labor camp during World War II. The main character Ivan Denisovich has been in the camp for a very long time. He starts to think that he will never be liberated from the camp.
The book of 139 pages only covers one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, this takes you through an entire day that is very stressful and hard on the characters in the book. Denisovich has many troubles throughout the one day. Throughout the day he moves up and starts getting more responsibilities like being in charge of the building of the wall. His squad leader Turin makes the life of the prisoners so much easier for example on roll call he never makes them stand out in the cold longer than they have to be. That shows true character to me by being so nice to the prisoners and not treating them like their scum. Overall this is a must read book and it truly amazing.

Forty-year-old forced labor camp worker Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, aka prisoner number S-854, heads out to work eight years into his sentence on a cold day in January 1951 as the novel begins. A bit under the weather, he tries to avoid work by getting one of the two permitted sick call slots. But with his temperature a virtually normal 99.2 degrees, he resigns himself to another day working in the frigid northern Siberia weather. "The air was 17 below, he was 99 above. The battle between them was on." During the prisoner's day, the story of which Introduction author Jacques Katel writes, "It is not a fictional account. The author, for eight years an inmate of similar camps, speaks from knowledge. He speaks the truth," Shukov's swirling thoughts are of a variety of topics: how he became incarcerated in the first place--an escaped German POW who reached his own lines, his countrymen would rather believe he was a spy than a successful escapee, thus he was imprisoned for treason; his fellow prisoners; the food; the work; the weather; the routines of his so-called life. Sounds routine and ordinary, but through the masterful skill of Solzhenitsyn, whose original 95,000 copies published originally in Novy Mir in November 1962 "sold out in a few minutes," even the most mundane happenings, like Shukov's mindful consumption of his meager rations, are brilliant. One Day is a masterful and exceedingly important story. Just as good but many times longer: The Gulag Archipelago. Fantastic short stories on the subject: Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales. Great memoirs: Man is Wolf to Man by Janusz Bardach and Kathleen Gleeson and Journey into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. Background information on the camps: Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum.

The day begins and ends in darkness and cold. The goal for the day is an extra dollop of soup , a few more minutes by the fire, a choice spot on a work detail. What you once were means nothing to who you are now. You are standing next to Ivan Denisovich , stay next to him , and survive.

That first little bit sounds pretentious , but it's kind of like the emotional tone I got from the book... What I liked about the novel is it's clear , simple and straight-away style. It brings the reader right into the action and doesn't waste time moralizing on the evils of Communism. It's the story itself that brings that messsage to you. A classic.