❄️ This short book put the cold of deep winter in my veins. I felt every icy page, every icy word. I remember when we were discussing this work in a Masters class that a bro asked if any of us had ever worked in a northern bush camp - he meant really north, like Alaska or the Yukon or northern BC etc. The icy dreariness and monotony of the day described in the novel, he felt, was exactly like the icy dreariness and isolation he experienced in such a work camp. I knew precisely what he was talkin...

In cold windswept Siberia Ivan Denisovich (Shukhov) struggles through another bleak day a prisoner in the Gulag labor camp one of millions, the time 1950 the reason he's there does not matter. His crime invented but the chill is real and guards like their jobs pummeling the inmates, in fact enjoy it. Often his frozen feet cause Ivan agony still they must walk step by step mile after mile, snow on the ground the dull sky above and misery incessant, to reach the work site. His gang 104, his name S...

But how long was this day spent in the company of Ivan Denisovich?That's long after a preface that is very useful to read.This cold winter day (almost minus 40 degrees below zero) is like a chronogram with no indication of the hours. Besides, what would a watch or a clock do for the poor zeks of this prison??This day does not end in the infinite pain of Ivan Denisovich and his companions in misfortune.A worthy (sic) heir of Ivan the Terrible and his gang of degenerates sent Ivan Denisovich to lo...

It’s been days since I finished this novel, but I couldn’t write a review, not because I didn’t have time but I felt some impediment by the the historical and human complexity read there. The tragedy of the Stalinist lagers( Gulag) is still today , in the 21st century, debated and not condemned by all. It’s a mind-boggling reading that leaves the reader with the redundant head of this obsessive, repeated, and always-equal daily routine, colliding with the miracle of the human factor. The possibi...

Who needs air conditioning when there is this book? I could feel the chill of the Siberian winter even if at home I am struggling with 38 degrees celsius.

Some Nobel Prizes in Literature resulted in more trouble than glory for the laureates. Little did it matter to Harry Martinson that his genius epic poem Aniara: An Epic Science Fiction Poem spoke for his worthiness as a Nobel Laureate, the bad press that followed the announcement ruined his mental health. In the case of Solzhenitsyn, the attention he received internationally after the award quite literally threatened his physical well-being and his ability to live and write in the country he con...

Inhuman oppression and ultimate humiliation… A disassembly line built to corrupt souls… Despite anything one must attempt to survive…The hammer banged reveille on the rail outside camp HQ at five o’clock as always. Time to get up. The ragged noise was muffled by ice two fingers thick on the windows and soon died away. Too cold for the warder to go on hammering.New day… New torment… No, the new day and the old torture repeating incessantly… But even in this hell there is a lupine law of survival…...

Dear Mr. Solzhenitsyn,I am not a Russian scholar, not even in the armchair variety. But you have done something magical in ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH that eclipsed this reader's ignorance: you have transmuted what it was like to live a life day-in and day-out in much the same fashion. Think about it: Morning, the same as yesterday. Afternoon: the same as yesterday's afternoon. The night: yep, the same. And this made me yearn for a day when Ivan would awaken and see that it would be d...

I want to appreciate life the way Ivan Denisovich Shukov does.I want to take pride in my work; I want to taste every bite of sausage, suck the marrow out of every fish bone, enjoy every puff of every cigarette, bask in a sunset, watch the moon cross the sky, fall asleep content; I want to focus on the necessities of living; I want to focus on life, but I have too much. It's not much compared to most everyone I know, but it is still too much. And because it is too much I can't appreciate life the...

it's all about perspective. yeah, ivan denisovich shukov is in a soviet labor camp, where he is freezing and has to work at bullshit tasks and is being punished for something he didn't even get to do (because being a spy is cool, while being punished for being a spy when you didn't even get to have the fun of being a spy is lame), and it's all terrible with no end in sight, but come on.he got to sleep late. his punishment for oversleeping is he had to wash some floors - indoors - instead of work...