Solzhenitsyn"s first book, this economical, relentless novel is one of the most forceful artistic indictments of political oppression in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The simply told story of a typical, grueling day of the titular character"s life in a labor camp in Siberia, is a modern classic of Russian literature and quickly cemented Solzhenitsyn"s international reputation upon publication in 1962. It is painfully apparent that Solzhenitsyn himself spent time in the gulags-he was imprisoned for nearly a decade as punishment for making derogatory statements about Stalin in a letter to a friend.