The First Circle

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Book Overview

Set in Moscow during a three-day period in December 1949, The First Circle is the story of the prisoner Gleb Nerzhin, a brilliant mathematician. At the age of thirty-one, Nerzhin has survived the war... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553070746
• ISBN13: 9780553070743
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Length: 674 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Returned to sender?

Is this some kinda book scam I'm not familiar with? Isn't it up to the sender to make sure the address was valid? It's the same address I've used for all my shopping sites. I apologize, but I gave the book three weeks to be delivered and it gets returned to sender without me even having laid my eyes on it. A real 0/10.

The Prisoner's Dilemma

Like Solzhenitsyn's first literary work, the novella "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", his first full-length novel "The First Circle" is an autobiographical work based upon his experiences as a political prisoner of the Soviet regime. The title is an allusion to Dante's first circle of Hell in "The Divine Comedy", that being the circle reserved for virtuous pagans, especially the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, who because of their paganism were denied entry to Heaven but because of their virtue were not otherwise punished. The novel is set in Mavrino, a place which can be considered part of the "First Circle" of the Soviet penal system. Mavrino, a former stately home now converted to a "sharashka", or special prison, is a very different place to the Gulag described in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". It is not situated in Siberia, or some other remote part of the country, but in the Moscow suburbs. The prisoners, who are mostly intellectuals, especially scientists, engineers or mathematicians, are adequately fed and enjoy good working conditions. They are put to work on technical projects of use to the Soviet military or to the MVD, the organisation which was later to become the KGB. The novel is unusual in that there is no single main character. One of the prisoners, the mathematician Gleb Nerzhin, is said to be an autobiographical character, based upon Solzhenitsyn himself, but several other characters are given equal prominence. Instead, we are introduced to a wide cross-section of the prisoners, some of the guards, officials and free workers in the prison, as well as a few outsiders. What can be described as the main plot is set in motion when Innokenty Volodin, an official at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, makes a telephone call to a doctor friend, warning him not to give samples of a new drug to a French colleague as he fears that such an action could be construed as espionage by the authorities. Unfortunately for Volodin, the call has been recorded by the secret police and a copy of the recording is sent to Mavrino, where some of the prisoners are already working on a project to invent a system of "voiceprints" which will enable an individual to be infallibly identified from a recording of his voice. The main action takes place over only three days (December 25th-27th 1949), but there are numerous flashbacks which Solzhenitsyn uses to fill in the background of his characters. We learn that few, if any, of the prisoners have committed serious crimes; most are either guilty of trivial offences or else have been framed by the authorities, normally under the notorious Article 58 of the Soviet Penal Code which defined "counter-revolutionary activity" and which enabled Stalin to imprison as "enemies of the people" any opponents of the Communist system or of his rule. (Solzhenitsyn himself was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for some unflattering remarks he made about the "big boss" in a private letter which was

Modern Russian Classic

Solzhenitsyn has written for the benefit of the rest of us, a work that recreates the madness that was life under Stalin. The First Circle is a story about what happens when the talents of a nation are wasted because those in power happen to be incompetent men (that tends to be generally the case, except New Zealand). At the heart of it, it is a testament to the power of a free market to value resources and direct them to where they are most valued. Well, no, not really. Solzhenitsyn is not a capitalist at heart and his work does not disparage communism. It is a non-partisan look at a cross section of society that had to suffer the loss of lives, loved ones and youth. It is about their hope in spite of the circumstances surrounding them. Solzhenitsyn's earlier work _One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich_ made Soviet society realize the genius that was in their midst. The First Circle cements Solzhenitsyn reputation as one of the greats of modern Russian literature. This book deserves to be in your collection. Trust me, you will not regret reading this. A definite must read!

If you like to read...read this

I was first introdced to Solzhenitsyn's works when I was a freshman in high school, far too many years ago in a little town. The book was the Volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago. It was really an eye-opener for me in so many ways, given that it was the first "really serious" book that I'd read.I believe that Solzhenitsyn is the best writer of the 20th century, or at least he's the top writer I've read so far (and I've read a lot of books). Maybe that's influenced by my early exposure, but I don't think so; I find his works just as compelling now as I did then.The First Circle is one of his most "accessible" works (that is, you can just jump in and start reading) and probably one of his best. A very compelling story; his portraits of the various vile creatures of the Soviet government have been shown to be quite accurate, and the way the various plots intertwine and are resolved is wonderful. The First Circle gives great insight into a culture totally foreign to most US citizens, as the book's a mixture of spy novel, guide to life in a Gulag camp, and brief introduction to Soviet society of the 1950s. A depressing place to be sure, but fascinating. Well worth reading.

In a circle of its own

Drawing its title from the home of the Virtuous Pagans in Dante's Inferno, The First Circle is an epic tale of brilliant engineers and scientists imprisoned by the Soviets in a work camp. This is not the ordinary work camp, however. Instead of the daily, torturous cold that Ivan Denisovich faces in another of Solzhenitsyn's novels, the prisoners face a subtler cruelty: they cannot return home to their families until they invent certain "tools" for the Soviets to use against alleged (and probably innocent) spies and turncoats who would in turn be imprisoned themselves.The prisoners are thus left with this moral choice: Do they sell their souls to leave this land of no hope and return home to their families and lives? Or do they resist the call to escape back to "earth" and, as a result, end up (like Dante) being sent into the REAL hell of the GULAG? All the while, Solzhenitsyn maintains a vitriolic wit, and the final product stands as an invective not just against the Soviet way of life but against the materialism so prevalent there and around the world, especially in the U.S. Combine The Brothers Karamozov with Catch-22, and you have The First Circle.