Name: Cancer Ward
ISBN: 9780099575511

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Cancer Ward examines the relationship of a group of people in the cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death. We see them under normal circumstances, and also reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. Together they represent a remarkable cross-section of contemporary Russian characters and attitudes. The experiences of the central character, Oleg Kostoglotov, closely reflect the author's own: Solzhenitsyn himself became a patient in a cancer ward in the mid-1950s, on his release from a labor camp, and later recovered. Translated by Nicholas Bethell and David Burg.

Cancer Ward

Cait🪼

I purposefully took my time reading this, and I'm glad I did. It's so wonderful to find a book that makes you feel physically connected to the characters: their sorrow is my sorrow, their joy is my joy, their lives are reflected in my life; and I found all of this in Cancer Ward. The ending was painful and, somehow, I'm glad it was - such a story couldn't end perfectly. This will stick with me for a long time.

The Russian Nobelist's semiautobiographical novel set in a Soviet cancer ward shortly after Stalin's death One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the cancerous Soviet police state. Cancer Ward, which has been compared to the masterpiece of another Nobel Prize winner, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, examines the relationship of a group of people in the cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death. While the experiences of the central character, Oleg Kostoglotov, closely reflect the author's own--Solzhenitsyn became a patient in a cancer ward in the mid-1950s, on his release from a labor camp, and later recovered--the patients, as a group, represent a remarkable cross section of contemporary Russian characters and attitudes, both under normal circumstances and then reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. A seminal work from one of the most powerful voices in twentieth century literature, Cancer Ward offers an extraordinary portrait of life in the Soviet Union.