Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn ; translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney and Harry Willetts ; abridged by Edward E. Ericson
1st Perennial Classics ed
New York :
Perennial,
2002
xxiv, 472 p. :
ill., maps, ports. ;
21 cm
Perennial classics
Previously published: New York : Harper & Row, 1985
Drawing on his own experiences before, during, and after his 11 years of incarceration and exile, Solzhenitsyn reveals with torrential narrative and dramatic power the entire apparatus of Soviet repression. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims, we encounter the secret police operations, the labor camps and prisons, the uprooting or extermination of whole populations. Yet we also witness astounding moral courage, the incorruptibility with which the occasional individual or a few scattered groups, all defenseless, endured brutality and degradation. Solzhenitsyn's genius has transmuted this grisly indictment into a literary miracle