In the First Circle - by Aleksandr I Solzhenitsyn (Paperback)

About the Book

A major literary event 50 years in the making: In the First Circle is the first complete English translation of Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "best novel" (Washington Post). With an introduction by Edward Erickson, this work by the author of The Gulag Archipelago is the story of a brilliant mathematician who finds himself locked in a Moscow prison filled with the country's brightest minds and must decide whether to aid Stalin's repressive state.

Book Synopsis

The thrilling Cold War masterwork by the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Gulag Archipelago, published in full for the first time.

"Solzhenitsyn's best novel. . . . A great and important book, whose qualities are finally fully available to English-speaking readers." --Washington Post

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.

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.

Review Quotes

"Solzhenitsyn's best novel." - Washington Post, on the 1968 edition

"A classic. . . . When comparisons of Solzhenitsyn are made with Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev, this is not hyperbole. . . . Astounding. . . . A literary work of art." - New York Times Book Review, on the 1968 edition

"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn changed the course of history. . . the epochal power of Solzhenitsyn's work is due not solely to the extent and quantity of his revelations but also to its artistic quality--to the fact that he wrote it with style, and created a work to stand alongside the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky." - The New Yorker

"Tolstoyan in its in sweep, it is among the greatest Russian novels." - Wall Street Journal

"The appearance in English of this new version of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's best novel is an exciting literary event. . . . A great and important book, whose qualities are finally fully available to English-speaking readers." - Washington Post

"The publication by HarperCollins of In the First Circle (the book's original title) in a restored ninety-six-chapter version, is therefore a publishing event of the first order. . . . With the publication of the restored version of In the First Circle, we have an opportunity to rise to Solzhenitsyn's challenge and again to take him seriously as an artist and thinker of the first rank." - Daniel J. Mahoney, First Things magazine

"The new edition of Solzhenitsyn's epic novel, In the First Circle captures better than any other work of fiction the quintessence of communist rule at its Stalinist peak: all-pervasive, paranoid, oppressive, incompetent, lethal. . . . The longer text is deeper and darker." - The Economist

"Solzhenitsyn's Cold War masterpiece. . . a new radically retranslated edition, which is greatly expanded." - London Times

"The most important political novelist of the twentieth century." - David Remnick, The New Yorker