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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Community Reviews back

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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caseyreads
caseyreads rated it 12 years ago
I never connected with Shukhov, probably because I have never been in any similar situation, and because he has such a matter-of-fact attitude. In fact, it is rather commendable that he can be positive and focus on the simple, short term goals in a single day that can help him get through. He is liv...
Julian Meynell's Books
Julian Meynell's Books rated it 12 years ago
It's an interesting book. It uses a short terse style, like a Russian Hemingway, which is the way to write about these things. The book is meant to record an absolutely typical day in a soviet gulag and show the indominatability of the human spirit, amongst suffering, inhumanity and tyranny. It d...
Calyre
Calyre rated it 13 years ago
Écrire à présent - c'est comme lancer des cailloux dans de l'eau dormante. Autant de tombés, autant de perdus sans même laisser de traces.- Chez nous, on disait comme ça : c'est Dieu qui émiette la vieille lune pour en faire des étoiles.- Émietter la lune pour en faire des étoiles? Pourquoi?- Ça se ...
veeral
veeral rated it 13 years ago
Solzhenitsyn's books - be it fiction or non-fiction - never ceases to amaze me. I am glad that now I have finished reading almost half of his major works. And according to my expectations, 'One Day' was as captivating as his other works (Though 'Gulag Archipelago' is incomparable and a massive work)...
all hearthfires & holocausts
all hearthfires & holocausts rated it 13 years ago
Read this in high school and it was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Ten pages about him eating bread. Ten. I don't think I have the temperament for Russian Lit.
A Cruel Man Delighting in Flowers
A Cruel Man Delighting in Flowers rated it 13 years ago
This book is one of those marvelous ones that manages to do many things at once. You can be depressed and uplifted simultaneously. The simplicity of the narration and the ordinary-ness of this society that Ivan Denisovich Shukhov finds himself a member of is all the more chilling for it, but also wa...
Vera
Vera rated it 14 years ago
My translation had an odd moment towards the end where the writing switches into first person every couple of sentences. Very odd! But apart from that this is magic writing. It is distressing and freezing and remarkable. Solzhenitsyn makes minutiae vital and revealing.
Tiny Library
Tiny Library rated it 14 years ago
This novel, as it says in the title, is all about one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, sentenced to ten years in the gulag for escaping from a German camp (they assumed he was a spy). Solzhenitsyn follows him from waking up to going to sleep through the harsh working conditions, bribes and other...
Bettie's Books
Bettie's Books rated it 15 years ago
First Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 6th June 2003. Rebroadcast on 7th September 2008 to mark Solzhenitsyn's death.Recorded from BBC Listen Again with Audiob Hijack Pro.One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich was a literary earthquake with profound political implications. At the height of the Cold War, ...
simmo
simmo rated it 16 years ago
Mostly read under several duvets, wearing a woolly hat, with the heating on full whack, I didn’t feel the cold of Siberia, but felt that if I sacrificed any of these three luxuries I surely would freeze to death. A personal yet unemotional account of how to survive detention in a Soviet gulag, conde...
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