num_pages: 592
description: 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.
language: English
title: The First Circle
titlecomplete: The First Circle
characters: Viktor Abakumov, Joseph Stalin, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Poskrebyshev, Mikhail Ryumin
genres: Fiction, Politics, Philosophy, Literature, Classics, Novels, Russian Literature, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Russia
ratings_count: 7912
places: U.S.S.R.
awards: awardedAt: -63129600000
name: Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
category: Roman
publisher: The Harvill Press