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Small paperback
Name of previous owner in ink on first page
Good condition
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns Cancer Ward is a semiautobiographical novel set in a Soviet hospital in Tashkent in 1955, two years after Stalins death. It portrays a group of patients in Ward 13, using their struggles with illness as a metaphor for the moral and political decay of the Soviet system.
The central figure, Oleg Kostoglotov, a former Gulag prisoner now exiled to Central Asia, undergoes treatment for stomach cancer while confronting the scars of repression and exile. Around him, fellow patients embody different facets of Soviet society: Pavel Rusanov, a bureaucrat who thrived under Stalinism, contrasts with those who resisted or suffered under it. Their conversations and fears reveal the lingering guilt, complicity, and trauma of the Great Purge. The ward itself becomes a microcosm of the nationwhere disease and politics intertwine, and where remission offers only temporary relief rather than true healing. Solzhenitsyns narrative blends stark realism with philosophical reflection, showing how the cancer of authoritarianism leaves wounds that no medicine can cure.
