/lit/ - Literature

What was his IQ?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

opinions?

>>13319483
Yes, it is worth reading, it is a fantastic book. However it is very, very long. The cover you posted is of the first volume, which is about between 600 to 700 pages long and written in quite small text and even smaller text for the often novel-length footnotes. The other 2 volumes have the same problem. It's quite accessible, the English translation is pretty good - it's a bit clunky at times but Solzhenitsyn's combination of sheer horror/outrage mixed with very black humour still shines through. It's just really fucking long.

As a result I usually reccomend starting with A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a short story version of the Gulag Archipelago which Solzhenitsyn, somehow, managed to get published in Soviet Russia in the 60s. He censored the shit out of it so it could be published there, so it's nowhere near as bleak as GA, but it'll give you a good idea of what tone GA sets and it's basically a short story version of it.

There is an abridged version of Gulag but I've read a bit of it and it just skips too much, it's really not the same thing. It's like the cliff-notes version. The full Gulag Archipelago is a journey into misery and human suffering, but it's also kinda hopeful at times and horrifyingly funny at others. It's a fucking masterpiece and you should read it but it's really fucking long and might take you years to get through.

It took me years at least. I seem to remember getting up to the bit with the dead baby getting thrown out of its crib by the secret police and then putting the book down for a solid year after that image. Then when I finally worked up the courage to return I found the sheer volume of horror on every page made it seem almost mundane in a way. And then the gallows humour started coming through and I just couldn't stop laughing at certain points. There's some bit in Gulag that are laugh out loud funny - and then Solzhenitsyn hits you with an unimaginably grizzly scene out of nowhere, or a perfect paragraph describing the truth of human morality in detail in a way that's life-changing (and shows you where Peterson been stealing all his ideas from, well that and Carl Jung's shit) and some of the most beautiful writing about people in the history of literature.

So, yeah. Worth it but fucking long.

>>11613865
Solzhenitsyn thinks you're a faggot OP