Original: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Odin den 'Ivana Denisovicha) is a novel written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir (New World).
Simplified: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (I Denisovich himself) had first-hand experience in the Soviet labor camps called the Gulag, having been imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for writing a derogatory comment in a letter to a fellow officer about the conduct of the war by Stalin.