The first circle

Title The first circle
Original title В круге первом
Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn; transl. from the Russian by Michael Guybon
Publication Collins
Size 700p
Language ENG ENG
ISBN
Topics Russian fiction--Political
Labor camps in literature
Russian fiction--Translated into English
Notes The novel depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka (a research and development bureau made of gulag inmates) located in the Moscow suburbs. This novel is highly autobiographical. Many of the prisoners (zeks) are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Joseph Stalin's purges following the Second World War. Unlike inhabitants of other gulag labor camps, the sharashka zeks were adequately fed and enjoy good working conditions; however if they found disfavor with the authorities, they could be instantly shipped to Siberia. The title is an allusion to Dante's first circle of Hell in The Divine Comedy, wherein the philosophers of Greece, and other non-Christians, live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell. [wikipedia]
823
SOLZ 6
39067
Available
Available
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