Signet One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: (50th Anniversary Edition)

Great read. In awe of Solzhenitsyn.Reminds me so much of my early years of reading Orwell - similar to down and out in London and Paris and road to Wigan pier.

In this book, Solzhenitsyn takes the reader through a day in life of Ivan Denisovich in minute detail. I found it totally absorbing and thought about it so much that I had to re read. It's a testament to human endurance and spirit. Although a study of life in the labour camps should be depressing, the book is uplifting in that the characters turn their situation around to make the best of a bad lot.I felt humbled after reading the book and privileged to have glimpsed into the life of this couragous man.Like The Cancer Ward, by the same author, the names are obviously unfamiliar being set in Soviet Russia and I personally found this quite hard work as I kept refering back. This is my only negative comment.Solzhenitsyn of course writes from experience and explains his survival in the camps. I couldn't help but compare his situaton with our own comfortable world. Mental and physical processes linked to get maximum value from every morsel. Every morsel appreciated to the full.Be warned, reading this could change your eating habits.A great and absorbing read.

Reminded me very much of 'House of the Dead'. Very descriptive account of an average day inside a Russian gulag. It's a short book that can be completed easily in a couple of days. The quality of the Everyman volume was excellent - hardcover with a useful ribbon page marker.

Have read before but since I love it had to have a copy - good for reminding you things can always be worse!

In these days where people are calling for camps to reeducate their political opponents, this work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn shows where this can lead. I read this before, about 30 years ago, but I was too young to truly appreciate the horrors of the gulag. A brilliant work by a man who survived a living hell.

This was the first book I had read by Solzhenitsyn.Put simply, it is literary brilliance captured in one book, in one day and in one man's story.