The First Circle
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · В круге первом
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1968, full text 2009
- Form
- Novel
- Language
- Russian
- Length
- Epic · 740 ppover 700 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendIn the First Circle, translated by Harry T. WillettsHarper Perennial, 2009The complete 96-chapter version Solzhenitsyn restored, replacing the cut text published in 1968.
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Three days in December 1949 in a sharashka, a prison research institute outside Moscow where scientist-convicts live in relative comfort while building voice-recognition and scrambling devices for Stalin. The mathematician Nerzhin, the engineer Sologdin and the loyal communist Rubin argue about conscience and the regime; a diplomat who phoned a warning to a doctor waits to be identified by the prisoners' own machine. The title comes from Dante: the sharashka is hell's mildest circle.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns The First Circle are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
