One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

Well-written. Not a fave, but I learned some things through it. ( )

One Day of Щ-854*
Review of the Recorded Books audiobook edition (Audible 2013, original 1982?) narrated by Frank Muller and translated in 1963 by Ralph Parker from the Russian language original "Один день из жизни Ивана Денисовича" (One Day of Ivan Denisovich) (1962)

I had already read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in my pre-GR days, but it was recently offered as part of a several day Audible sale of titles for $3, i.e. roughly the price of an Audible Daily Deal, so I picked it up again. It seemed especially timely with the current Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine attempting to reawaken the days of Russian imperialism as well as the cult of personality which surrounded Russian Communist despot Joseph Stalin.

Solzhenitsyn's fictionalized version of one day of his experience in a Kazakhstan labour camp during the end of his own 8-year sentence for disloyalty (1945-1953) has lost none of its power over the years. It is relentlessly bleak and yet records the tiny small hopeful nuggets in the efforts of prisoners where a single scrap of food or of an item to trade could make the difference in their ability to survive.

As always, I was pleased to note a reference to characters of Estonian heritage:Two Estonians, close as brothers, sat on a fiat concrete slab taking turns smoking half a cigarette from the same holder. These Estonians were equally fair, equally tall, equally lean, and had equally long noses and big eyes. ... Well, it's said that nationality doesn't mean anything and that every nation has its bad eggs. But among all the Estonians Shukhov had known he'd never met a bad one."
See photograph at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fb...
Photograph of the author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1953 after his release from the Gulag after serving an 8 year sentence. Image sourced from The Times UK.

The narration performance by Frank Muller was excellent. The original 1982? audiotape source of the digital audiobook was detectable several times, when a split-second speeded up tape sound could be heard. Those were only a brief distraction.

Trivia and Links
* The original title of the book was Ivan Denisovich Shukov's prisoner letter & number. The Russian letter Щ is pronounced "Shcha" in English.

There is background on the writing and the surprising first publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich during the years of the post-Stalin Khrushchev "thaw" at the Solzhenitsyn Papers website.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has been adapted for film three times.
The first adaptation was a 1963 English language TV movie directed by Daniel Petrie with actor Jason Robards as Ivan Denisovich. You can watch the entire film on YouTube here.
The second adaptation was a 1970 English language movie directed by Casper Wrede with actor Tom Courtenay as Ivan Denisovich. You can watch the entire film on YouTube here.
The third adaptation was as a 2021 Russian language movie titled "Ivan Denisovich" or "100 Minutes" in some regions, directed by Gleb Panfilov with actor Filipp Yankovskiy as Ivan Denisovich. You can watch a trailer for it on YouTube here. Note: You can turn on Russian subtitles, and then turn on Annotations and then select English or any other language of your choice under Auto-Translation. ( )

This was a quick, interesting read. But I just…didn’t really vibe with this book. It wasn’t bad, it was just slow and kind of mundane in my opinion for something that’s 100 pages. Maybe it was just the writing of the time, but I just didn’t really like it. As I said, it was an interesting read. Just not for me. ( )

classic russian lit. Gulag life. ( )

Excellent bok about the absolute despair of the Soviet gulags, it was used by Nikita Kruschchev to denounce Josef Stalin. Who knew how such mundane things such as food, sleep, and a smoke could take such a role in such desolate circumstances? ( )