One of the best of Solzhenitsyn's novels, as apart from his multi-volume master work - "The Gulag Archipelago", the novel traces the life of one Zek (Russian slave labourer). It is estimated that over thirty million people of dozens of nationalities went through Stalin's communist meat grinder. Many of them didn't survive the experience.

Far different from "The Gulag", and some his other novels such as "Full Circle" and "Cancer Ward", "A Day in the Life,," is fictional but based on facts. It takes a day in the life of one ordinary Zek - Ivan Denisovitch and his struggle just to get through one day in the life of one of dozens of Communist terror camps.

He rises at 4,00am. He has a blazing fever, but the camp doctor says he is ok for work.  He eats his sparse gruel - a thin porridge, often thickened with grass and after the constant roll calls he is driven out by KGB guards with dogs in 30 degrees below to a twelve hour bricklaying shift.

Ivan does not have much time to think or reflect for he is usually bone weary from the work, the cold and the constant standing around being counted and re-counted.

In a way "A Day in the life.." is more powerful even than the "Gulag" (with its cast of millions),  because with Ivan the reader can identify with the struggles of one man, to stay sane and survive just one more day in the Marxist lunatic asylum of Stalinist Russia.

The book was made into a film, with Tom Courtney starring as Ivan. It is long out of circulation but if you can get a copy - watch it! You can also put down that dubious copy of "Anne Frank's Diary", pick up "A day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch" and find out what survival and suffering were really like.