A review by nwhyte
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

http://nhw.livejournal.com/744051.html[return][return]Somewhat grim reading, but at least very short. It is basically the history of a single day in a Soviet labour camp in 1951. The prisoners are mostly there for no good reason (Ivan Denisovich himself is imprisoned on a trumped-up charge of espionage, after escaping German capture at the front ten years earlier). Conditions are brutal, but unfortunately I have read of much worse, more recently and elsewhere. The most memorable part of the book for me was the portrayal of Tiurin as manager of the squad of prisoners including the protagonist, balancing the brutality of the system against a desire to do his best for himself and his team.