Product Description

Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34741 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Released on: 2007-08-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 704 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780061253713
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Best Nonfiction Book of the Twentieth Century" -- Time magazine

Review
"Best Nonfiction Book of the Twentieth Century" (Time magazine )

About the Author

After serving as a decorated captain in the Soviet Army during World War II, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was sentenced to prison for eight years for criticizing Stalin and the Soviet government in private letters. Solzhenitsyn vaulted from unknown schoolteacher to internationally famous writer in 1962 with the publication of his novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. The writer's increasingly vocal opposition to the regime resulted in another arrest, a charge of treason, and expulsion from the USSR in 1974, the year The Gulag Archipelago, his epic history of the Soviet prison system, first appeared in the West. For eighteen years, he and his family lived in Vermont. In 1994 he returned to Russia. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at his home in Moscow in 2008.

Customer Reviews

The best book I have read in years! A real eye-opener.
For any who have any nostalgia for the Soviet Union, this book should put it to rest. This book is hard to categorize; it is more than one man's opinion, but less than an objective history. It is, as Solzhenitsyn puts it, "an experiment in literary investigation": a combination memoir and dissertation on the evils of Communism and its inevitable product, the forced labor camp. Some have criticized Solzhenitsyn as an anti-Communist/pro-Western polemicist, but that is not an accurate description. He is a realist, showing not only the faults of Communists, but also those of the West and Western leaders. This should be required reading for European and world history classes. Volume 1 (of 3) describes the arrest and interrogation procedures, as well as life in the Gulag.

Greatest Book Ever Written
I have the full three volume set of the Gulag that I read years ago. It is the greatest book ever written. In portraying Communism, as he described as man's inhumanity to man, Solzhenitsyn has an exceptional ability while depicting the excessively cruel treatment of human beings in the Gulag to demonstrate his dignity and the dignity of those who suffered at the hands of their oppressors. The entire book is full of stories of the courage of human beings in the face of such evil. In that way, while depicting the horrible conditions of the Gulag, the book ultimately provides an uplifting message that peace and kindness are enduring human traits that can and do shine through despite overwhelming attempts to erase them. Never has there been a more courageous and humane writer.

Aleksandr is The Great
This is vintage Solzhenitsyn; his brilliant mind shines forth splendidly. A book that is difficult to put down, places one inside his mind to see what he describes, so much from having spent hours memorizing while in the camps so he could later give us a glimpse of the horror that millions upon millions of human beings endured.