Landmark Publications of 2009: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "In the First Circle"

The second half of 2009 saw the publication of several landmark texts. The word text will suffice, elevated above the usual categories of novel, short story collection, poetry volume, etc. The publications I am going to talk about in the next few months, one per month, were exercises in textualizing, by publishers who were seeking to affirm and extend the longevity of the texts; they were prompted by some customer demand, some opportunity, or by the death of the author, to publish a major work that would put in the spotlight some of the key works that had brought fame to that author. Some of these books have found their way to me, seeking to be reviewed, or simply to be talked about.

Today I am going to talk about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle: The first Uncensored Edition, published by HarperPerennial and translated from the Russian by Harry T Willets. I have already reviewed it in 200 words for the San Franciso Book Review, where I gave it 5 stars for the fact that, one, it was once published and, two, has been published again to great acclaim. It was originally published in the Russian at the end of the 1950s and was "smuggled", or leaked into the English (Western) publishing world in 1968, shortly after Jacques Derrida had written his landmark and trendsetting essay "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences". Derrida went on to influence thinking about the human sciences in America and beyond, and Solzhenitsyn would soon (1970) win the Nobel Prize. There was just one problem--although In the First Circle brought great fame to its author, it was incomplete; it had been chopped to publishable, appropriate size, but still turned out to be one of the great novels for the twentieth century.

I never got a chance to read it, not even in my long days at the Russian Library in Harare. I didn't even know about it....until now (January 2010), when it came to me. To be reviewed. Came to me uncensored, like I was meant to read it uncensored and complete. And I can tell you, it blew me away.

The review comes out in February.

Details, Details, Details

Most will remember that the big deal about this book, other than the fact that Solzhenitsyn has a nice name to say in public, like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, etc, and the fact that Solzhenitsyn was a brilliant writer, a great master of detail, was that it was a story about the Russian Gulag, at a time when it was great to know the secrets of the Russian Gulag, a subject which still remains fascinating. The novel
delves into its writer's experiences during Stalin's regime. Condensed to the events of only four days, the novel still offers a panoramic view of Soviet society, offering what a HarperPerennial editor has called a "huge gallery of characters."

Solzhenitsyn died at the age of 89 in 2008, having, as a New York Times report points out, "outlived by nearly 17 years the Soviet state and system he had batteled throuhhj the years of imprisonment, ostracism and exile." His wiiting career started with the publication of One Day in the Lifer of Ivan Denisovich, which dealt with prison life. In the First Circle, which gave him international fame, was original published as In the Circle, but even with that missing word in the title, and the censored chapters (more than nine), the novel became is the pinnacle of both the writer's and translator's careers. Reading the novel, I was tempted to comment that Solzhenitsyn had a great command of the English, like what we (some of us) are used to saying about Nabokov, but I had to remind myself that it was a translation, and that good translation is nothing without a great work in the original language. So I read on.

Book Description, offered by the publisher:

The thrilling cold war masterwork by the nobel prize winner, published in full for the first time

Moscow, Christmas Eve, 1949.The Soviet secret police intercept a call made to the American embassy by a Russian diplomat who promises to deliver secrets about the nascent Soviet Atomic Bomb program. On that same day, a brilliant mathematician is locked away inside a Moscow prison that houses the country's brightest minds. He and his fellow prisoners are charged with using their abilities to sleuth out the caller's identity, and they must choose whether to aid Joseph Stalin's repressive state—or refuse and accept transfer to the Siberian Gulag camps . . . and almost certain death.

First written between 1955 and 1958, In the First Circle is Solzhenitsyn's fiction masterpiece. In order to pass through Soviet censors, many essential scenes—including nine full chapters—were cut or altered before it was published in a hastily translated English edition in 1968. Now with the help of the author's most trusted translator, Harry T. Willetts, here for the first time is the complete, definitive English edition of Solzhenitsyn's powerful and magnificent classic


Quote from book:

He cried in despair. "In a few days' time the soviet agent Koval will be given important technological information about the production of the atomic bomb-"

"What?" the American attache sounded surprised. He thought for a moment. "Who are you, anyway? How do I know are speaking the truth?"

"Do you know what a risk I am taking?" Innokenty shot back. Somebody seemed to be knocking on the glass behind him.

"The atomic bomb?" the American repeated dubiously. "But who are you? Tell me your name."

There was a muffled click, and dead silence followed, unbroken by crackling or buzzing.

They had been cut off.


Then breathlessly, you will move on to Chapter 2 and may not stop until the end of the novel, which really is not the end, because you will want to start to book all over again.


The next landmark publication of 2009 will be ....well... okay...Raymond Carver's Collected Stories.