The First Circle
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
***Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature***
Recommendations from our site
“The Gulag is a very microcosmic, intensive form of Stalinism and other writers—like Shalamov for example—have described the Gulag in a way that is unforgettable. But as a broad canvas, albeit set in a very privileged part of the Gulag, of how this Nineteen Eighty-Four world works, The First Circle does more than any other book to get us there.” Read more...
Orlando Figes, Historian
“What this book helped me to do is think of Stalin as a cross between Big Brother and the Wizard of Oz. His presence is everywhere, but he’s nowhere and doesn’t really show himself very much. And, actually, in those four chapters, the real Stalin is this rather pathetic, elderly man with yellow teeth who doesn’t wash. He’s just insignificant, somehow. He doesn’t command respect or authority from his persona. He commands authority because of the system he’s at the center of.”
Orlando Figes, interview on the best Russian novels, 31 August, 2022
