Alexander Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle (first published in the West in 1968 and in the USSR in 1990), tells the story of Gleb Nerzhin, a man who is a brilliant mathematician but also a prisoner. Set during three days in Moscow, In the First Circle chronicles not only the experience of Gleb in Stalin's Gulags, it details the experience of twelve other fictional characters in Stalin's deadly Gulags -- twelve other people from totally different walks of life. The book covers themes of humanism, persevering in the face of extreme hardship, integrity, and surviving in an oppressive system.
Upon release, In the First Circle received profound critical acclaim. On Amazon, it has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. On the book review aggregation site Goodreads.com, it has a similar rating of 4.21 out of 5 stars. "At his best," Kirkus Reviews writes, "he has composed a sardonic, shattering work, with the memorable scenes between prisoners ironically rivaling those in Gorky's The Lower Depths... From Tsarist Russia to "The Boss," what a painfully repetitive uphill struggle, what a terrible world." The book was also adapted for the screen three times, the first of which was a 1973 film directed by Aleksander Ford (this was a commercial and critical failure). It was later adapted into a TV Movie in 1992 and into a miniseries in 2006 (which Solzhenitsyn himself was heavily involved in and narrated).
