Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.7344
EAN: 9780810115903
ISBN: 0810115905
Label: Northwestern University Press
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 580
Publication Date: November 12, 1997
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Sales Rank: 525532
Studio: Northwestern University Press
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Product Description:
The First Circle of Dante's Hell -- where the souls of the pre-Christian philosophers are doomed to exist throughout eternity -- stands in this novel as a metaphor for certain penal institutions of Stalin's Russia. Set in Moscow during a three-day period in December 1949, The First Circle is the story of the prisoner Gleb Nerzhin, a brilliant mathematician. At the age of thirty-one, Nerzhin has, like the author, survived the war years on the German front and the post-war years in a succession of Russian prisons and labor camps. His story is interwoven with the stories of a dozen fellow prisoners -- each an unforgettable human being -- from the prison janitor to the tormented Marxist intellectual who designed the Dnieper dam; of the reigning elite and their conflicted subordinates; and of the women, wretched or privileged, bound to these men. As we follow Nerzhin's fortunes, we become familiar with the inner paths of an entire society -- one vast Inferno -- and the diverse ways in which different men and women managed, or failed, to live within it. While Solzhenitsyn portrays the exercise of moral and political authority at all levels of the hierarchy (even devoting a few chapters to a portrait of a failing Stalin), the novel's principal setting is a special prison where inmates conduct scientific research. Through his treatment of the prisoners, the secret police, and the non-prisoner Muscovites trying to lead honest lives during this difficult period, Solzhenitsyn explores the problems of complicity and conscience, ends and means. Included are many reflections on Soviet history of the sort Solzhenitsyn expanded in The Gulag Archipelago. In 1962 the publication of One Day in theLife of Ivan Denisovich brought Solzhenitsyn international fame. Two years later, The First Circle was accepted for publication in a Soviet journal. Its publication was blocked, however, by Soviet authorities; ultimately the manuscript was smuggled abroad and published in translation in 1968. A landmark of Soviet Circle is as powerful today as when it was first published.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Harper & Row's de facto censorship
For the second time in the last fifteen years, Harper & Row (or HarperCollins now), which claims to own the world-wide publishing rights to The First Circle, has stopped printing this magnificent work. They did it once before in the mid-90's. When I protested to them that I could not find copies enough for my students in a Russian literature course, they shrugged me off. Happily, after letting the book languish for two years, they then licensed publishing rights to Northwestern University Press. But according to Northwestern University, Harper will not let them renew the license. Nor is Harper printing the novel. According to my latest phone call to them, they might-- "perhaps as early as winter, 2009." Ironic, is it not, that once censored in his own country, Solzhenitsyn now suffers the same fate because an American publisher, for reasons no one at Harper can explain, will not make it available to the reading public. I am hoping my students will be able to hunt down enough used copies to read it this spring, but . . . . Shame on Harper!
Rating:  - Maybe its the translation
Maybe the fault is with the translator, or maybe it is because the author is really a mathematician, but i found this book leaden and uninspiring. The prose are workmanlike to say the least. The dialogue is stilted and would sound at home in mouths of Dostoyevsky's or Turgenev's creatures.
Aside from the hero, the characters --and their voices-- are undifferentiated. The women are two dimensional like figures constructed from formulas of femininity rather than real women drawn from life.
The same is true of Solzhenitsyn's play of ideas. One theory trotted out after another. The characters who orate them as simply mouthpieces for the author's erudition. As didactic as a textbook. All that's missing is footnotes. Of course it was not possible for the publisher to refine and polish the text in collaboration with the author as all the great novels of the 20th C were, so we really can't expect it to live on the page as do the great novels of the 20th C. Still, I can't help but think Solzhenitsyn's Nobel was for his politics than his prose. Is he really the equal of his contemporary honorees Kawabata, Beckett, Boll or Neruda?
The great power of The First Circle is its insight into Stalin's terror. But there are many other books on this theme, many of them much better. Koestler's Darkness at Noon springs first to mind. Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope: A Memoir is the undisputed masterpiece of the genre--and the has the benefit of being all true. Every page of that ... Read More
Rating: - beyond thought provoking
Solzhenitsyn's character development is always amazing but, this book went beyond anything I have ever experienced before. The story of Nerzhin and Nadya was especially moving and captivating. Volodin's story of the Lubyanka made me feel as though I was actually there within the cold, towering walls. It is incredible how Solzhenitsyn can bring his characters down to the deepest levels of dispair and yet provide a glimmer of hope and humanity. I have read a few of Solzhenitsyn's novels before, and this, my latest, was exceptional.
Rating: - Much to identify with
What does a gulag for the learned elite have in common with an American corporation? Far too much. I read this book years ago, and wish that I could find my copy again. Every engineering education should commence with a reading and discussion of this most engaging book, alongside Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine. Kidder covers the exterior of the engineering process in an American context of a specific time. Solzhenitsyn, though goes to the deep essential tension, of creativity commanded to flower, on a schedule, in the arid fields of rigid institutionalism.
Rating:  - AN ALMOST GREAT BOOK
"The First Circle" is a deeep look into the hearts of people subject to near-absolute power. There is a quality of Kafka more than Tolstoy. The power is so distant. But then Solzhenitsyn takes himself and us into the mind of Stalin himself. This is the weakest part of the book. He makes sounds which he imagines to be Stalin's, as having Stalin think of going to Church- like Christians everywhere. One never feels inside Stalin. It seems almost a childlike view of the dictator. In many ways it is as one-sided, though not as propagandistic or overtly phony as the many "studies" of Hitler. "Ten years! That's no sentence. Thirty years."
One can see the horror of arbitrary power, but not look into the soul of its possessor. There is an immense suffering implied by the men driven away on the meat truck- the one who says they are leaving Hell and the other who says No! We are going there now. There is more reality in the suffering of a man who cares only for family. It is tempting to compare this book with "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo. I think Hugo's picture of victimhood is less realistic, more Romantic than Solzhenitsyn's. "The First Circle" is a book that ought to be read- that much I can honestly say--though I feel Solzhenitsyn bit off more than he could chew. It would have taken a Shakespeare to have told the story as powerfully, yet with more realism.
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