Favorite Book Number Seven

Learning of the evils of the Soviet system was in many cases a slow process.  After all, like today there were many proponents of it (And they should have been ashamed of themselves as well!)  For the rest of us, we only had a few reports that were leaked out and of course, the novels and historical perspectives of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

I remember being absolutely transfixed while reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch in the mid-sixties.  It is an account of life in the frozen Gulag where so many innocent people suffered under this cruel regime, but it is also a wonderful account of man's spirit.  A film was made of it in 1970 starring Tom Courtenay.  I read pretty much everything Solzhenitsyn wrote and in particular The Gulag Archipeligo, which is much like Denisovitch, but without the happy ending!  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch is Number Seven on my list of favorite books.