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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich cover art

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Written by: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Narrated by: Frank Muller
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Publisher's Summary

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s startling book led, almost 30 years later, to Glasnost, Perestroika, and the "Fall of the Wall". One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brilliantly portrays a single day, any day, in the life of a single Russian soldier who was captured by the Germans in 1945 and who managed to escape a few days later. Along with millions of others, this soldier was charged with some sort of political crime, and since it was easier to confess than deny it and die, Ivan Denisovich "confessed" to "high treason" and received a sentence of 10 years in a Siberian labor camp.

<[>In 1962, the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir published a short novel by an unknown writer named Solzhenitsyn. Within 24 hours, all 95,000 copies of the magazine containing this story were sold out. Within a week, Solzhenitsyn was no longer an obscure math teacher, but an international celebrity. Publication of the book split the Communist hierarchy, and it was Premier Khrushchev himself who read the book and personally allowed its publication.

©1963 E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. (P)1982 Recorded Books

What listeners say about One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

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A survival story

This is a fascinating account of the monotony of time spent in the camps and also the myriad day-to-day survival adaptations of people who were imprisoned in the gulags. #audible1

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4 people found this helpful

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Heart wrenching and timeless. Brilliant.

Years ago when I read this book many years ago, I thought it brilliant. Now I was glad of the opportunity to hear the story as an audiobook, and it is a superb rendition of Solzhenitsyn's words. Thank you to Frank Muller for his very effective narration.

Sharing this one day with Ivan Denisovich, one day of his ten year sentence, one day of hard labour on a cold day in a Soviet gulag prison is one day that will remain with you long after the book is finished.


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3 people found this helpful

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Excellent Enjoyed most of the entire story of thi

Excellent enjoyed it. very easy to understand.
narrator was good. explaining very accurate.
Enjoyed very much.

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2 people found this helpful

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I’m cold just listening.

Another gulag novel. This chilly tome is just the thing to read while waiting for buses in arctic conditions.

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A flavour for Communist Times

I got this on sale from Audible and had read it as a student in high school in Belgium in French so it was great to read it again. In fact, shortly before it went on sale, we had been talking about with some friends who (rightly!) recommended it for those who don't necessarily want to slog through The Gulag Archipelago, but want the flavour of what communism led to. Not the most uplifting book of course, because it conveys life in Stalin's gulags after the war, but it conveys it well, with the general lowness of life and the joy that can come from simply having had a full belly.

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