Written by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn - Audio book narrated by Frederick Davidson - Unabridged Nonfiction - 11 LIBRARY EDITION CASSETTES

Publisher, Blackstone Audiobooks (December 1989)

NOTE: LIBRARY EDITIONS are packaged in a sturdy, durable outer vinyl case that stands up to years of repeated use designed for library and rental circulation. Albums are shelvable, space-efficient, with at-a-glance spine titles.

The first four-fifths of this volume cover what the author calls the "Destructive-Labor Camps" and the fate of prisoners in them, felling timber, building canals and railroads, mining gold, without equipment or adequate food or clothing, and subject always to the caprices of the camp authorities. Most tragic of all is the life of the women prisoners ... and of the luckless children they bear.

Once again, this chronicle of appalling inhumanity is made endurable by the vitality and emotional range of the writing. In one truly remarkable chapter-a parody of an anthropological treatise-he achieves new heights of sardonic wit. And in the final section, the music changes and Solzhenitsyn provides a magnificent coda on the possibilities of redemption and purification through suffering.