For my 5th book in the
Back to the Classics Challenge, I read
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This novel is set in Stalin's 1950's Russia. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov has been a prisoner for 8 years, serving a 10-year sentence for supposedly being a spy. In 203 pages, Solzhenitsyn manages to describe one typical day from reveille to lights out in such glowing detail as to hold the reader's attention and interest (a much-welcome surprise to me, especially given that this is a book in translation). The living conditions of the prisoners are bleak, the food is in short supply, and the temperatures are brutally cold, but Shukhov manages to work around the system in such a way as to find moments of happiness and success in his day. I'm sure when this book was written in 1962, many readers were up-in-arms about the cruelty of the Soviet society, but in this day and age of mass communication when wars and bombings and school shootings are brought into our homes everyday, it was a little hard for me to get overly emotional about this story. Thank goodness Stalin's reign is over though.
