One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Since Nobel Peace Prizes are so much in the news, it's worth mentioning that yesterday - October 8 - was the day in 1970 that Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Prize for his groundbreaking novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Published in 1962, One Day allows readers a glimpse into the life of the title character, Ivan Denisovich, a prisoner in a Soviet gulag. The novel is based on Solzhenitsyn's own sufferings as a prisoner, and its portrayal of the stark and inhumane conditions of Stalin's prison camps shocked the world.