Cancer Ward
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn author Alexander Dolberg translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:1st May '03
Should be back in stock very soon
'Without a doubt the greatest Russian novelist' Sunday Times
FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
‘Solzhenitsyn is one of the towering figures of the age, as a writer, as moralist, as hero’ Edward Crankshaw
After years in enforced exile on the Kazakhstan steppes, a cancer diagnosis brings Oleg Kostoglotov to Ward 13.
Oleg Kostoglotov arrives at Ward 13 after years of exile, carrying the scars of imprisonment and the fear of what his cancer diagnosis will mean.
Taking place in the Soviet Union in 1956 during the Khrushchev Thaw, Cancer Ward gathers patients from across society in a provincial hospital. Former Party officials lie beside political exiles, each confronting illness while reckoning with the compromises demanded under Stalinist repression.
As treatments strip away pride and certainty, Oleg questions the loyalty, silence and fear that shaped his life in the camps. Conversations in the ward expose betrayal, survival, and the moral cost of obedience.
As post-Stalin historical fiction, Cancer Ward turns a hospital into a portrait of a wounded state, revealing how political terror lingers long after the dictator’s death.
‘Solzhenitsyn is one of the towering figures of the age, as a writer, as moralist, as hero’ Edward Crankshaw
Perhaps the most famous work of fiction dealing directly with the disease * Guardian *
And what does Solzhenitsyn say about cancer? How does he reach me, in Australia, with his Russian book? He shows me something valuable that I discovered during my own medical treatment. The people who are involved in cancer -- the sufferer, the doctors, the nurses, the orderlies -- are often occupied less with the cancer than with each other. There are small societies of patients and medical workers in a hospital ward, and in those societies people share what they have: their love and resentment, their stories and observations. -- Brenda Walker * The Australian *
Solzhenitsyn was a great writer as the result of the collision of a particular personality and an awesome subject matter -- Henry Porter * Observer *
Solzhenitsyn is a man of genius…it is a privilege to be Solzhenitsyn’s contemporary * Observer *
There has been no such analysis of the corrupting power of the police state in Soviet literature * Listener *
He is one of the towering figures of the age, as writer, as moralist, as hero -- Edward Cranshaw
ISBN: 9780099575511
Dimensions: 197mm x 129mm x 35mm
Weight: 401g
576 pages