The Gulag Archipelago

It's a harrowing real-life, incredibly human, insightful story of Solzhenitsyn's experience in the Soviet prison camps during and after Stalin in Russia. A real life page turner.

on HN, 2010

When I mention this book, I meet a lot of people instantly debating the death toll numbers presented by Solzhenitsyn, but for me, the main point of the book is about complicity in the context of the Stalinist regime and complicity in evildoing more generally.

on HN, 2019

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn showing how Stalin operated and how imprisoned people survived is a good read about humans doing hard things.

on HN, 2025

Another book that is very important today, as socialism/communism is on the rise in parts of the western world. It's an exploration of what happens when social trust breaks down in a society, as it did after the Bolshevik Revolution.

on HN, 2018

It has only gotten more relevant with the resurgence of the ideology which led to the rise of GULAG. I have a digitised version of the cassette tape edition read by Frederick Davidson, it is long enough to take you across the world.

on HN, 2022