One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
When I hear the word ' gulag ' I first feel incredulity, horror, pity and then resignation. Natural, don't you think? Imagine bitter cold, working like dogs, probably worse, almost to your death - or at least for the sake of survival, in the middle of nowhere, making the best of what you have, protecting what you own, knowing that all that matters is that you get your day's worth of ration to sustain you for another day. Unimagineable? Not so much, because One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells you almost all you need to know about it. This simple, yet vastly informative book, is one in existence that gives an inside view of life in the gulag. Drawn from Solzhenitsyn's own experience at one of this labor camps, it is aimed at chronicling a singe day, from reveille at 5 a.m. to bed time at 10 p.m., in the life of a prisoner. The story mainly concerns Ivan Denisovich Shukov, though parts of it are narrated by an omniscient observer. I...