One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Narrated by: Frank Muller

Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's Summary

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s startling book led, almost 30 years later, to Glasnost, Perestroika, and the "Fall of the Wall". One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brilliantly portrays a single day, any day, in the life of a single Russian soldier who was captured by the Germans in 1945 and who managed to escape a few days later. Along with millions of others, this soldier was charged with some sort of political crime, and since it was easier to confess than deny it and die, Ivan Denisovich "confessed" to "high treason" and received a sentence of 10 years in a Siberian labor camp.

<[>In 1962, the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir published a short novel by an unknown writer named Solzhenitsyn. Within 24 hours, all 95,000 copies of the magazine containing this story were sold out. Within a week, Solzhenitsyn was no longer an obscure math teacher, but an international celebrity. Publication of the book split the Communist hierarchy, and it was Premier Khrushchev himself who read the book and personally allowed its publication.

©1963 E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. (P)1982 Recorded Books

Non Soviet Citizens, You Need To Know This!

I was born and raised in USSR, so to me this story is not shocking. Non imprisoned citizens were treated in the same, just much milder, manner. Sadly, unlike NAZI death capms, Gulag camps were never turned into museums and historical sites. Russian's don't really acknowledge the atrocities. No person of authority was put on trial like in Nuremburg. However, second half of my life I lived, worked and raised children in the USA. I see so many Americans going about their lives oblivious to reality, taking the good life they have forgranted, having no appreciation for what they have, complaining about petty little things and blowing them up to sound like real abuses or oppression and worse of all admiring Socialism or selling Communism under some new name. Read or listen to this story and then other books by Solzhenitsyn. Then think about. Be honest with yourself. Russia didn't start like this, it was a regular European country and a seriously Christian one. Socialist economy and Communist ideology brought out the worst in people, suppressed freedoms and lead to millions of untimely deaths. And don't think it can never happen in your civilized country, that's just naive. BTW this is still going on in North Korea.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

Classic And Compelling

A masterful tale of Stalinist Russia, told in a very convincing tone. The tale itself is brilliant, concisely conveying the horrors of camp life in a Soviet political prison. The narrator makes a few pronunciation mistakes, but is generally very faithful to the spirit of the story and its dozen or so characters.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

An amazing day in the life...

I read the book while listening to Audible for a University class which made it much easier to get through. This book certainly made me think about my blessings and how a person's perspective really affects their happiness and ability to cope.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Audio Quality

This review has nothing to do with the story which was fantastic.
As of October 2, 2018 :
I did however experience 2 - 3 very noticeable glitches in the playback of the book. I rewound thinking maybe it was my computer but they were there the second time around...Just a heads up.
Hope they'll fix it soon.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Disappointing production/translation

The translation and narration are poor compared to the Gulag Archipelago productions with John Davidson narrating. The American narrator is mumbly and dull. He is not able to distinguish characters by different manors of speech, tone, and emphasis the way the British actor in the Gulag series was and the translation is bland without the beautiful language and dry wit of the Gulag series. There was not a single F-word (a modern habit) in all 3 volumes of Gulag, yet this translation of the vastly shorter work is riddled with it. Solzhenitsyn is too refined and cultivated to reduce his vocabulary to crude curses. Very disappointing.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Powerful for its understatement

Solzhenitsyn captures the life of the Russian Soviet Gulag without belaboring its worst elements. Having read this book many years ago I was delighted to find that Frank Muller narrated this audio version. The reading is excellent and the story thought-provoking. We need to continually remember what happened in these totalitarian regimes - and what is happening today wherever government takes too much control whether socialism, communism, or some other form of power. Otherwise we risk the aggressive reemergence of this evil.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Life in a Stalinist Gulag

"One Day..." is an arresting, evocative portrayal of social interaction necessitated by the disgraceful dehumanized conditions of the Stalinist era Gulags. The story, its characters, and the narration are thoroughly engaging.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

A MAN WHO IS WARM CAN NOT UNDERSTAND,

A MAN WHO IS FREEZING
This should be required reading in high school. I am pretty sure it is in some college courses. While it is fairly short, it does start to wane, half way through. I know it is sacrilege not to love this classic, but that is the type of ahole I am. Read it for the knowledge, just don't expect to love it.

Muller was one of the best

41 of 60 people found this review helpful

Must read

This book should be required reading for its literary and moral importance. I would recommend it for anyone.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Hard times

A quick story showing the manaughteny of prison life in Siberia. Time takes forever to come and it often stays too long.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful