#409 "In The First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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In 1967, Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn edited his new novel down from 96 chapters to 87 chapters in the hopes that a censored version would be more palatable to Soviet publishers. It was not.

In 1968, he was able to successfully get the novel published in Europe. It was, however, the shortened 87-chapter version.

In 1978, the full unedited version was finally published in Russia. A full English translation would not land in America until 2009.

In 2025, seeing that In The First Circle was a lengthy Russian novel about military prisons in WWII, the cast of Just In Case We Die almost vetoed it. All three of them are now grateful that they did not. This novel– long considered to be Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece–is really something special.