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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

The first published novel from the controversial Nobel Prize winning Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago.

In the madness of World War II, a dutiful Russian soldier is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in a Siberian labor camp. So begins this masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, a harrowing account of a man who has conceded to all things evil with dignity and strength.
 
First published in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia. Illuminating a dark chapter in Russian history, it is at once a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to man’s will to prevail over relentless dehumanization.

Includes an Introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
and an Afterword by Eric Bogosian

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Published Aug 4, 2009

208 pages

Average rating: 7.51

41 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

CheriF
Sep 25, 2025
10/10 stars
Interesting and bare. Enjoyed it very much.
The Dragon
Aug 28, 2025
7/10 stars
I liked it
Nigel Thornberry
Aug 16, 2025
5/10 stars
Too much porridge talk, no jeopardy.
E Clou
May 10, 2023
8/10 stars
I get the sense that people feel Solzhenitsyn's work is important because it depicts communist oppression. As a Cuban-American, I don't dismiss communist oppression and my grandfather was himself a prisoner in a labor camp in Cuba for 10 years for very specifically opposing the communist regime. But I feel like the point and problem is oppression in general, also fascist oppression, even the capitalist prison-industrial complex keeping people in prison unjustly (for example for weed even as weed is becoming legal in many states).

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