{"product_id":"the-cancer-ward-by-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn","title":"'The Cancer Ward' by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"12\" data-end=\"567\"\u003eA huge, bruising Soviet novel set inside a cancer clinic in Uzbekistan, where patients arrive with tumours, grudges, memories, political wounds, petty vanities, and whatever scraps of hope the state has not yet requisitioned.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"12\" data-end=\"567\"\u003eOn the surface, \u003cem data-start=\"254\" data-end=\"267\"\u003eCancer Ward\u003c\/em\u003e is about illness; obviously, because Solzhenitsyn was not exactly known for subtle little metaphors in a cardigan, it is also about the moral sickness of Stalinism, bureaucracy, exile, fear, survival, and the intimacy produced when everyone in a room is waiting for news from their own body.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"569\" data-end=\"964\"\u003eThe ward becomes a miniature society: doctors, officials, ex-prisoners, workers, believers, cynics, cowards, and people trying very hard not to understand the full shape of what has happened to them. It is bleak, funny in that Russian “well, everyone is ruined but at least the sentence has architecture” way, and much more humane than its reputation as a Big Serious Soviet Brick might suggest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"966\" data-end=\"1140\"\u003eFor readers of Dostoevsky, Grossman, Shalamov, Bulgakov, Tolstoy’s later moral writing, or anyone who likes their novels politically radioactive and psychologically enormous.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1168\" data-end=\"1345\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePenguin paperback reprint, 1973. Originally published in Russian by The Bodley Head in 1968; English translation first published 1968\/69; Penguin edition first published 1971.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44991469486163,"sku":null,"price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-31T183505.721.png?v=1780216516","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/the-cancer-ward-by-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}