Search results

It looked to me that there was a lot more than companionship going on. Shchagov, on the other hand, offered the right kind of companionship at the right time in Chapter 47. I liked Shchagov a lot.

The decent thing was what happened between the Nerzhins and between the Gerasimoviches. Especially the women. They remained faithful despite intense pressure to throw their husbands aside for a better life. I found myself thinking how few of us in our time would remain faithful under far less...

In chapter 24, Sologdin says "... you ought to find out where you are, spiritually understand the role of good and evil in human life. There is no better place to do it than prison." Prison can have the value of helping to concentrate the mind, by depriving one of many of the options in...

One of the recurrent questions raised in this book begins in the first chapter, where Volodin thinks to himself: "If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?" Nerzhin picks up the thread in chapter nine, when he is asked to work in cryptography. He realizes this would take all...

For me, the key to understanding the novel was in Chapter 68, when Roitman asked the question: "Where should one begin to set the world aright? With others? Or with oneself?" In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenytsin said: "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil...

I found Solzhenytsin's portrayal of Stalin in Chapter 21 especially poignant: "In general, Stalin noticed in himself a predisposition not only toward Orthodoxy but toward other elements and words associated with the old world -- that world from which he had come and which, as a matter of...

Oddly, I have not found the book to be so depressing. As silverseason points out, the zeks were not living in misery and squalor. And, more importantly, they had meaningful work to do. Their lives still had purpose. I would consider the most depressing book I have read to be Giants in...

To say there is no truth is to say there are no lies - and there is no justice. Solzhenytsin didn't buy into that. In an open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers' Congress in 1967, Solzhenytsin said "I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances --...

What happened to Fathers and Sons? Should it still be in the running, or are we agreeeing to hold it back a month?

I find it disturbing this book is no longer in print a mere 40 years after it was first published, and 38 years after the author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. This was presaged in Chapter 23. Yakonov asks "how long did the church persecute people -- ten centuries?" Agniya...

I have nearly finished The First Circle, but this would be my first try at this sort of thing so am uncertain what I will bring to the discussion.

I found a 1969 paperback version at the used book store. It cost $1.00.

I am surprised to learn The First Circle is also not in print in the USA. If it ends up as our selection, I will need to scrounge around the used book stores.