Book-café meeting #1

We invite you to our 'book-cafe' to discuss the novels or poems written by famous Russian writers. We speak and think and discuss together. That's why we propose you to get prepared to the meeting and to read a book in advance in ANY language you want. The idea is to get acquainted with the book 'from the inside'.

26 October –The first meeting of book-cafe: Alexander Solzhenitsyn 'One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich'.

Why we have chosen it? It is the modern book which has already become classics of Russian literature.

It was first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir (New World).

The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Its publication was an extraordinary event in Soviet literary history — never before had an account of Stalinist repression been openly distributed.

You may find the text here (in English):

http://www.davar.net/EXTRACTS/FICTION/ONE-DAY.HTM

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17125.One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich

http://free-ebook-download.org/One-Day-in-the-Life-of-Ivan-Denisovich.html

At least four English translations have been made. Of those, the 1963 Signet translation by Ralph Parker was the first to be published, followed by the 1963 Bantam (Random House) translation by Ronald Hingley and Max Hayward and the 1970 translation by Gillon Aitken. The fourth translation, by H.T. Willetts and the only one authorized by Solzhenitsyn,[not in citation given] was published in 1991. Some names differ among the translations; those below are from the Hingley and Hayward translation.

Link to this event in Facebook http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=142495692463386

* The first meeting is held in RLC, but later we think to find a cozy cafe and meet there. If you know any nice cafe with literary atmosphere, please share! ))