The First Circle

Aleksandr Isajevic Solzenicyn

ISBN 10: 0006122507 / ISBN 13: 9780006122500

Published by Fontana Press, 1970

About this Item

Leichte Verformung / umgeknickte Seiten; Leichte Verschmutzung / Farbtonveränderung. In the First Circle depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka (a research and development bureau made of GULAG inmates) located in the Moscow suburbs. This novel is highly autobiographical. Many of the prisoners (zeks) are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Joseph Stalin's purges following the Second World War. Unlike inhabitants of other gulag labor camps, the sharashka zeks were adequately fed and enjoyed good working conditions; however, if they found disfavor with the authorities, they could be instantly shipped to Siberia. The title is an allusion to Dante's first circle, or limbo of Hell in The Divine Comedy, wherein the philosophers of Greece, and other virtuous pagans, live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell.

Seller Inventory # 66ab7e69-e7e2-480b-ac28-d3eb32bf0039

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The First Circle
• Publisher: Fontana Press
• Publication Date: 1970
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0006122507
• ISBN 13: 9780006122500
• Binding: Softcover
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

In the First Circle depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka (a research and development bureau made of GULAG inmates) located in the Moscow suburbs. This novel is highly autobiographical. Many of the prisoners (zeks) are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Joseph Stalin's purges following the Second World War. Unlike inhabitants of other gulag labor camps, the sharashka zeks were adequately fed and enjoyed good working conditions; however, if they found disfavor with the authorities, they could be instantly shipped to Siberia.The title is an allusion to Dante's first circle, or limbo of Hell in The Divine Comedy, wherein the philosophers of Greece, and other virtuous pagans, live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell.

From the Back Cover

The thrilling cold war masterwork by the nobel prize winner, published in full for the first time

Moscow, Christmas Eve, 1949.The Soviet secret police intercept a call made to the American embassy by a Russian diplomat who promises to deliver secrets about the nascent Soviet Atomic Bomb program. On that same day, a brilliant mathematician is locked away inside a Moscow prison that houses the country's brightest minds. He and his fellow prisoners are charged with using their abilities to sleuth out the caller's identity, and they must choose whether to aid Joseph Stalin's repressive state—or refuse and accept transfer to the Siberian Gulag camps . . . and almost certain death.

First written between 1955 and 1958, In the First Circle is Solzhenitsyn's fiction masterpiece. In order to pass through Soviet censors, many essential scenes—including nine full chapters—were cut or altered before it was published in a hastily translated English edition in 1968. Now with the help of the author's most trusted translator, Harry T. Willetts, here for the first time is the complete, definitive English edition of Solzhenitsyn's powerful and magnificent classic.