Books

Attractive samizdat edition of Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward" (Rakovyi korpus), completed in 1966 and circulating in unpublished form both in the Soviet Union and abroad, where it was first printed in 1968. Solzhenitsyn's first novel dealing with Stalinist repression, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was published in 1962 in the literary journal "Novy Mir" and caused a sensation in Soviet society recovering from Stalinism. "Cancer Ward", which is based on the author's own cancer treatment, and uses the cancer ward as a metaphore for the "condition" of the Soviet society, was also initially approved for publication in the same journal. However, by 1966 the tide of loosened censorship had turned and the novel was ultimately rejected. Solzhenitsyn continued, in vain, to try to publish the work in the Soviet Union, in order to prevent its circulation in fragments and unauthorized versions, but ultimately failed. This copy comes from the collection of Viktor…

'Cancer Ward' is a semi-autobiographical novel set in a hospital in Stalinist Russia which metaphorically critiques the state of Soviet society.