SOLZENICIN - A WARD OF RAK SICKNESSES issue 1

SOLZENICYN Alexander

CANCER WARD

translated from the Russian by Jozef Lobodowski

Paris, 1971 Literary Institute, pp. 477, format 13.5x21 cm

First edition in Polish.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), arrested in 1945 and sentenced to eight years in a labor camp, was in exile until 1956. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In 1974 he was arrested again, stripped of his USSR citizenship and deported to West Germany. He did not return to his homeland from the United States until 1994.

Cancer Ward, a work long banned in the USSR, was first published in the West in 1968.
The hospital portrayed by Solzhenitsyn is an allegory of the totalitarian state, and the two patients: Oleg Kostoglotov and Pavel Rusanov are extreme examples of the condition of its citizens. Struggling with cancer, the heroes of this poignant novel find out how heartless and indifferent is the institution set up to save lives. Faced with death, they ponder the meaning of human existence, loneliness and the nature of the world.

The novel was canvassed by the author's experience of undergoing surgery to remove cancer after a stay in the gulag, followed by a recurrence of the disease and its eventual cessation.

HARDCOVER FULL CONTEMPORARY LEATHER. COVERS SURROUNDED BY GOLD EMBOSSED AND BLIND-STAMPED BORDERS. SPINE WITH RAISED SCROLLS, EMBOSSING AND GILT. MARBLED BOARDS, PAGE EDGES STAINED WITH THE SAME PATTERN.

BDB condition/ A NICE piece.