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The First Circle

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At the height of Stalin's postwar terror, Innokenty, a young diplomat and scion of a corrupt ruling class, discovers an earlier and more spiritual tradition than that adopted by the October Revolution, the beginning of a process which is Solzhenitsyn's basic theme: the individual's experience of acquiring an immortal soul.

Unwisely but generously, Innokenty helps a friend in danger of arrest, only to be arrested himself and sent to a special prison.

This, the archetype of the Gulag, is described with masterful psychological insight.

There are no heroes and hardly any villains; oppressors are no less victims then the oppressed.

In the great tradition of the Russian novel, The First Circle is both a brooding account of human nature and a scrupulously exact description of a historical period.

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Product Details
The Harvill Press
1860460909 / 9781860460906
Paperback / softback
04/08/1988
United Kingdom
592 pages
135 x 216 mm, 620 grams