One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A stark indictment of Communism viz., the tyrannical and dictatorial state of Stalinist Russia. Dissidents – real or imaginary – army officers, intellectuals, artists, writers, anyone found in the wrong place at the wrong time (as was the case with the protagonist) were incarcerated and struggled for decades of perpetual hunger in the all-pervasive chilly conditions of Siberia

Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eye-wash.

Now we could take things easy. Everyone was delighted. As delighted as a hare when it finds it can still terrify a frog.

I started this year with Dan Simmons’ Olympos where the robotic LGM (little green men of Mars) are called zeks – slaves and here I come across the original meaning of the word

First he only drank the liquid, drank and drank. As it went down, filling his whole body with warmth, all his guts began to flutter inside him at their meeting with that skilly. Goo-ood! There it comes, that brief moment for which a zek lives.

The bread would do for tomorrow. The belly is a rascal. It doesn’t remember how well you treated it yesterday, it’ll cry out for more tomorrow.

The novella describes in vivid detail “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” and ends thus

A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.
There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail.
The three extra days were for leap years

Poignant!

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