A Cup of Tea & Biscuits

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...

I doubt there is much to say about this book other than READ IT! Written by Hans Keilson and set in Germany in the time of World War II - it's onset and during, to be precise - this book is strange, anonymous and engaging. It's a slow read, mind you, as you have to sift through the pages with care lest you may get lost in the timeline. The first person narrative shifts between memories - events and people, that are promised to play larger roles later in the story - and current events. What had me getting through this novel was the almost ironic manner in which no one is named, a few maybe but not significantly enough given the time period it is set it. But the enemy, the nameless ominous adversary that the narrator battles throughout the novel, rises to such a powerful level to induce literary fear mainly because he's called -. Keilson describes, very beautifully, mundane activities that no one would really see any beauty in; the main one being how the protagonist sees his...