One of the most chilling novels about the oppression of totalitarian regimes and the first to open Western eyes to the terrors of Stalin's prison camps; if Solzhenitsyn later became Russia's conscience in exile, this is the book with which he first challenged the brutal might of the Soviet Union.
“Cannot fail to arouse bitterness and pain in the heart of the reader. A literary and political event of the first magnitude.”
–New Statesman“Stark . . . the story of how one falsely accused convict and his fellow prisoners survived or perished in an arctic slave labor camp after the war.”
–Time“Both as a political tract and as a literary work, it is in the Doctor Zhivago category.”
–Washington Post“Dramatic . . . outspoken . . . graphically detailed . . . a moving human record.”
–Library Journal
