Commentary
When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH was published in the Russian literary magazine Novy Mir it was a monumental historical and literary event. The first sanctioned piece of writing out of the Soviet Union to directly address the horrors of the Stalinist regime and the brutal nature of the Soviet labor camps, the novella had revealed the secret nightmare of the Communist system to the entire world. Solzhenitsyn's slim book, drawn from his own experiences in what he would later call "the gulag archipelago," recounts a typical day in the life of a prisoner as he struggles to stay warm, stay healthy, find food, avoid theft, and maintain his humanity in the sub-zero Siberian wasteland. The novella's unflinching look at the oppressive and absurd rules of the camps is simultaneously vivid and surreal. More than a historical document, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH is a great work of literature that depicts a vision of man-made hell, a place where humanity has been pushed to the breaking point by the iron fist of The State.

Reviews
"Though a remarkable book, 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' is not the masterpiece certain reviewers have taken it to be....'One Day' yields, more than anything else, a beautiful sense of its author as a Chekhovian figure: simple, free of literary affectation, wholly serious....As a revelation of the recent past, 'One Day' tells us nothing that many other witnesses--also victims of the Siberian camps--have not told....If, however, we do try to examine the book simply as a novel, what do we find? A work that is modest in scope, pure in tone, utterly authentic in treatment, but with a number of severe limitations. In 'One Day' tautness of realistic notation becomes a means of limiting imaginative power, and the need for faithful recollection, a cause for repressing the dangers of meaning. The book is emotionally parched...."

Irving Howe

"A masterpiece...a work squarely in the mainstream of Russia's literary tradition and comparable to some of its greatest examples...Solzhenitsyn speaks...in a voice all his own."

"This quiet tale has struck a powerful blow against the return of the horrors of the Stalin system. For Solzhenitsyn's words burn like acid."