num_pages: 580
description: Notice: "In the First Circle" and "The First Circle": "In The First Circle" is 200pp longer; "The first circle" is a censored and abridged version.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 survived the war years on the German front and the postwar 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. A landmark of Soviet literature, 'The First Circle' is as powerful today as it was when it was first published, nearly thirty years ago.
language: English
title: The First Circle
titlecomplete: The First Circle
characters: Viktor Abakumov, Mikhail Ryumin, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Poskrebyshev, Joseph Stalin
genres: 20th Century, Literature, Classics, Novels, Philosophy, Russian Literature, Russia, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Politics
ratings_count: 7912
places: U.S.S.R.
awards: awardedAt: -63129600000
name: Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
category: Roman
publisher: Northwestern University Press