gulag archipelago. Solzhenitsyin.

One of those books I have been meaning to read for years (ever since I read a day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch as a teenager) but never got round to… partly because it is so fricking long.

What can i say… one of the most important books ever? The scale of human suffering within it will be bound to move you, like the Holocaust in many ways…. but worse in that it was alllowed to continue for so long and affected so many more people.

For those that dont know him… Solzhenitsyin was one of several million soviet citizens who were caught up in the Soviet legal system for political reasons – many were exiled, a lot were shot, some were raped and tortured… a lot of them were forced to work to death in labour camps dotted around the then USSR (the archipelago of the title.)

Bit dry at times, but well worth investing time in.

Only problem was… after i had finished the book (took me about 2 weeks… which is a lot for someone who usually reads a couple of books a week!) I realised that this was volume 1 of a 3 volume set! 😯 Flippin eck… bit daunting the idea of reading the next 2.