I find Solzhenitsyn's style to be a bit stilted. A far better writer on the Gulag topic, both from a stylistic and personal experience standpoint, is Varlam Shalamov, whose Kolyma Tales (Колымские рассказы) are considered some of the best on the topic.
Solzhenitsyn's story is set in Kazakhstan, which was not as brutally cold as Kolyma or Magadan, and Solzhenitsyn never saw the worst of the worst that the Gulag system had to offer. Shalamov saw the people coming back from uranium mines.
Either way, Solzhenitsyn has written other works which are better. In the First Circle (В Круге Первом) is probably the best.
Solzhenitsyn's story is set in Kazakhstan, which was not as brutally cold as Kolyma or Magadan, and Solzhenitsyn never saw the worst of the worst that the Gulag system had to offer. Shalamov saw the people coming back from uranium mines.
Either way, Solzhenitsyn has written other works which are better. In the First Circle (В Круге Первом) is probably the best.
I'm sure what you're saying is correct, but I thought One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was very effective and well-written.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- 10/01/2012 02:03:00 AM
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Shukhov is his last name, not a "nickname".
- 10/01/2012 02:23:27 AM
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Oh ... I missed that one ... its probably right at the beginning of the book too 
*NM*
- 10/01/2012 04:26:53 AM
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*NM*
- 10/01/2012 04:26:53 AM
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Still a really good book, though
- 11/01/2012 03:40:56 PM
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What I liked was that it didn't try to be a brutal, exaggerated, horrible story ...
- 13/01/2012 02:34:26 AM
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