Starring Tom Courtenay as Ivan, and featuring stark but stunning cinematography by Sven Nykvist, the movie version of Ivan Denisovich remains the best evocation of a novel on the screen that I have ever encountered. Originally published as a movie tie-in edition, it also contains a shooting script for the marvelous film that about ten people in the world saw. Although there have been several translations, the one I own is Gillon Aitken's. My book, however, was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a tattered, dog-eared copy of which has been within reach on my desk for 35 years. I first encountered Solzhenitsyn's work in 1970, and quickly devoured The First Circle and Cancer Ward. How did a young American, who was neither a student of global politics nor Soviet history (I was barely a student of classic Russian literature then), connect so deeply with the work of a Soviet dissident? And while I could pour over comparable texts and deconstruct word choices, I would rather tell you why I staked a personal claim to it more than three decades ago. Willetts has given me the perfect excuse to read my book yet again. It's your book, after all.Īleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is my book. Each time you've read it, each time you have opened at random to a page, you've found something that speaks directly to you. Again and again over the years, you've turned to this book when you needed solace, inspiration, or perspective. You knew it was yours the first time you read it.
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