20:18 ; Tuesday, 15 February 2011
BOOK: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
personal background:
This book was recommended to me by my politics teacher after I had told her that I was interested in the Russian Revolution. Unfortunately it took me forever to finish as I had two other books to read for English Literature, but it's a relatively small book and I managed to finish a large portion of it in two days. I'm relatively new to the Russian Revolution, and apart from a Yesterday documentary watched almost a past life ago and my father's strange and twisting rant about oppression, I've got a somewhat poor knowledge of it.
context:
Author of the novella, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, experienced the hardship that was the gulags (labour camps) of the Soviet Union and revealed to the world the harsh imprisonment faced by proposed dissidents of Stalin and his regime. This is just one of the books he wrote and is largely autobiographical.
the verdict:
As you might assume, this novella (i.e. not long enough to be a novel!) focuses on just one day of prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukov but, my, what a day. The brilliance of this narrative, and perhaps this is a testament to the writing ability of renowned Solzhenitsyn, is that it really does make you feel exactly what Shukov feels. He wakes up in aches, and you feel the aches - you feel the bitter, biting cold - the hunger for just another piece of bread. Shukov's day not only consists of the laborious work of building walls for buildings he'll never use rightfully, but emphasises the reliance from and of his fellow workers, the corruption of gulag hiearchy and the terrible power of the elite. One noticeable moment is when someone declares that the higher ups are going to take away another Sunday for work. Imagine, a day of rest being stubbed out because someone says so. And it's being followed - what else can they do?
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| From the film adaptation |
For those of you who enjoy historically accurate and biting fiction (or non-fiction, in this case), One Day in the Life... is essential. It's a quick read, though you may think otherwise when you realise how incredibly arduous the routine of a gulag prisoner really was - the events taking place seem to take place in an eternity.
Labels: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, book, history, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Russian Revolution
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This book was recommended to me by my politics teacher after I had told her that I was interested in the Russian Revolution. Unfortunately it took me forever to finish as I had two other books to read for English Literature, but it's a relatively small book and I managed to finish a large portion of it in two days. I'm relatively new to the Russian Revolution, and apart from a Yesterday documentary watched almost a past life ago and my father's strange and twisting rant about oppression, I've got a somewhat poor knowledge of it.
