Cancer Ward: A Novel (FSG Classics)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent eight years (1945-1953) as a political prisoner in the Soviet Union's Gulag. He then was sent to "internal exile" -- exile in non-European Russia, specifically Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia. While there, he fell desperately ill to a cancer that had not been diagnosed while he was in the labor camps. He was sent to a hospital in Tashkent and after treatment his cancerous tumor went into remission.That experience formed the basis for CANCER WARD, which traces the lives of an ensemble of patients, doctors, and staff in a cancer clinic somewhere in Kazakhstan (probably Tashkent) over about ten weeks in early 1955. The central character is Kostoglotov, thirty-four, who in rough biographical details is the alter ego of Solzhenitsyn.Two themes predominate. One is cancer and its treatment. Patients confront life and death more starkly. Moral/philosophical issues are explored -- such as a doctor's "right to treat" and a patient's "right to dispose of his own life", either through refusing treatment or suicide. Kostoglotov was thinking of suicide when he entered the clinic, but after he was released ten weeks later he had a new lease on life and new hope.The other major theme is the Stalinist penal/judicial system, and its innumerable injustices and cruelties. The time of the novel is two years after Stalin's death and a thaw of sorts is starting to occur, with rumors of even greater changes. Those developments and rumors are quite unsettling for one of the major characters, a Soviet apparatchik named Rusanov, but for others, including Kostoglotov, they seem too good to be true. For Kostoglotov there is suddenly the possibility that he will be released from internal exile and allowed to return to his home city of Leningrad. The novel also portrays the insidious system of informants and denunciations that had long prevailed in the Soviet Union (Rusanov is haunted by the prospect of the return of two individuals whom he had falsely denounced years ago in order to advance his career and get a larger apartment). And in many other respects, CANCER WARD is critical of the bureaucratic inefficiencies and absurdities of the Soviet Union of its time.In the tradition of the best of Russian literature, CANCER WARD contains much moralizing and philosophizing. I sense that here Solzhenitsyn is more akin to Tolstoy than to Dostoevsky (and, indeed, Tolstoy's short story "What Men Live By" features prominently in one section of the novel). CANCER WARD also is rich in historical and cultural references. Solzhenitsyn quotes the two lines I use as the title for this review from a poem by Sergei Yesenin, perhaps the most popular Russian poet of the twentieth century. Those lines, of course, might be spoken by either a survivor (for the time being, at least) of radiation therapy or the Gulag.CANCER WARD is a fine novel and well worth reading. However, it takes a back seat to "In the First Circle", which Solzhenitsyn also wrote in the mid-1960s and which I read about a month ago. CANCER WORD is more prolix, and Solzhenitsyn's rhetorical questions and flourishes begin to wear on me (though it is possible that I read the novel too close in time to "In the First Circle"). Furthermore, CANCER WARD does not approach the timelessness of "In the First Circle". Perhaps I am being too critical, but I wish to signal my decided preference for "In the First Circle", which is a classic.

I got this 1991 translation as a "Used Book" It was good, but, had some humidity exposure on the pages. Otherwise was OK. I loved the translation of this version as well.Absolutely, spellbound! I do not know, where to start my Review. This is the first time, am reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Somewhere within the USSR, during the post-Stalinist period of the 1950s, the people are coming to terms with the cankerous aftereffects, just how a bunch of patients do, at this remote, Cancer Ward. In it we get to see the patients, doctors, nurses, orderlies and all kinds of dramatis personae, who keep this novel as lively and relatable, that I did not find even a page or chapter (36 chapters running to 536 pages) plodding. From the beginning to the end, Solzhenitsyn's powerful writing, invites us to see what is precisely going on at the Cancer Ward from various vantage positions. While one can read this as emblematic of life in USSR (a powerful dialogue between the "bone-chewer" Kostoglotov and Shulubin about socialism and private-enterprise capitalism, in one of the chapters, can be riveting), during the 1960s, with its own decrepit system of governance, there is also a lot to just be able to relate to the empathetic happenings within the Cancer Ward to the patients, nurses, and doctors, simultaneously.There are patients of all stripes: Be it the party apparatchik Rusanov, who never fails to hold water for his Party and touts his (questionable) influence at the Ministry in Moscow, to the ever-curious, fastidious, importunate Kostoglotov, who does not fail to impress even the Doctors with his quick-read on medical literature and is a Doubting-Thomas, who wants to know about every minutiae, before he submits himself to the treatment, the rich kaleidoscope of patients at the Cancer Ward, makes this tome a timeless treasure. Because, within this spectrum of various patients, we can see many of our own -- friends, relatives, family-members, etc. It can put a smile, a tear, or a reign of terror, depending upon the case.In the wake of the Stalin's last great purge -- Doctor's Plot in 1953 -- many of these patients, tend to see doctors as "assassins in white coats", as they were led to believe! On the other side, we see some of the doctors in the Cancer Ward, literally changing their field of interest, just to save a particular patient they are so desperate to save. For e.g., in the case of Sibgatov, Dr. Ludmila Dontsava even changes her field of interest to bones -- just to cure him. Doctors like her had to constantly separate the superfluous from their patients' stories. And when they are tortured by fastidious patients like Kostoglotov to explain things and they find a way to question the patient's (il)logic, pat comes the riposte that "after all man is a complicated being and why should he be explainable by logic? So, some of these interactions -- this healthy friction between the patients and the doctors -- catapults the reader, immediately to the Ward. Without inhibitions.The way, the Doctors are forced to disarm their probing patients (like Kostoglotov, when it is said, "shock is needed to tame such patients" LOL.), or the way Yefrem or Kostoglotov rub against Rusanov are pretty humorous, fun-filled moments. Even the mathematical axioms and theorems of Stereometry, which the 16-year old Dyomka discusses with Kostoglotov not only tests Rusanov's patience, but, was funny enough to remind me of those nightmarish days of proving those theorems and axioms, in my middle-school, with some Russian Math textbooks that were technically strong, but, practically soporific.I also liked the Practical Philosophy imbued within the novel, that at one place, it is laid out quite simply: Even a good doctor shortens your life. Or, for that matter, There is no such thing as a complete cure in Cancer. Despite these realities, the doctors also encourage their patients to "accept treatment not just with faith, but with joy." The drama in all these acts are real and vicarious.During these times of COVID-19, I could not wonder how many Doctors and healthcare workers we had already lost to the very disease they are fighting against, in light of this dialogue between two doctors, one of whom herself is inflicted with cancer due to excessive radioactive exposure while treating her patients. With a shred of helplessness, she talks about the injustice of being stricken by an oncological disease being an oncologist herself. To which, her mentor and examining physician gently says, "There is no injustice there. On the contrary, it is justice in the highest degree. It's the truest of all tests for a doctor to suffer from the disease he specializes in." A serious discussion is only made more humorous by Solzhenitsyn's parenthetical comment, "(What's just about it? Why is it such a true test? He only talks like this because he's not ill himself.)" LOL.Some of these quirky, cynical, parenthetical comments are interspersed throughout the novel and it is hard to not chuckle for the irony and wit, they present.There are poems from Aleksandr Pushkin, Georg Herwegh, some anonymous risque verses, etc. that lightens up the narrative.There is quite an amount of platonic love...some infatuation...some flirtatious caressing, osculation (besides auscultation as well ;-) within the Cancer Ward. But, in what was supposed to be one powerful caress, between a young boy and a girl (patients) will always haunt me for the way it unravels, so much so that the final line of that chapter always reverberates: Today it was a marvel. Tomorrow it would be in the trash bin.Overall, there is lot to ponder, reflect, and garner, from this superb novel. One of the novels on my re-reading list, already. In the end, some of the locus classicus like these two (NB: There are lots, organically, naturally interspersed, mostly as dialogues and nondescript comments.) talk to readers like me, at a more basic and profound level."The meaning of existence was to preserve unspoiled, undisturbed, and undistorted, the image of eternity, with which each person is born. Like a silver moon in a calm, still pond.""What is inside me is not all of me. There is something else, sublime, quite indestructible, some tiny fragment of the universal spirit. Don't you feel that?"

WAY longer than I realized, pretty good story but heavy on themes of sexual harassment and unprofessional behavior. Definitely holds to a stereotypical "manly" perspective, but I found most of the characters believable and relate-able. Best read when you have or know someone who has a decent understanding of Russian culture and history, Had to read for a course in medical school, might not have read otherwise.

Well, what can you say about Solzhenitsyn? The cancer ward described in the novel has been described as a microcosm of Soviet society in the 1950s, and that seems to ring true. For example, the main female protagonists must go without having a husband, as so many men were killed in the Great Patriotic War. The lack of self-esteem seems to be a common theme in Russian literature and culture...Kostoglotov, the protagonist, despite all his complaints of the system, at the end of the story goes willingly off into exile again. The way Solzhenitsyn describes cancer treatment in the Soviet Union is probably the most interesting aspect. It doesn't seem all that that different from how western societies have dealt with cancer.

Solzhenitsyn's workmanlike novel holds up well over time. Written over 50 years ago before his exile and more ambitious work, The Cancer Ward tells the story of a varied handful of cancer patients and their medical caregivers over a short period in the immediate post Stalin USSR. The overarching metaphor is obvious, like the Ward patients, the nation is slowly coming to terms with the "cancer" of the Stalin era. Brilliant character sketches; effective story-telling.

It is now 50 years since the first European translations of this novel were published. In those years the author, Solzhenitsyn, became a world famous Russian dissident, fled to the USA, published several other books and gained a Nobel prize for literature. The cancer ward must be among his most well known works, and one of the most challenging. Both the width and depth of the book are remarkable. Set in the Russia of the 1950's, it displays what life was really like in communist Russia, with nothing working properly, beaurocracy rampant and poverty the norm for most people. The cancer ward itself holds mostly terminally ill patients who receive radical surgery, radiotherapy or intravenous chemotherapy. The patients, however, are used as a vehicle for Solzhenitsyn to expose the inadequacies of the socialist state and at the same time he can expound, at length, on what life would be like in a merit and morally based system of government. In using his characters as surrogates of himself, he reminded me of William McIlvanney who used the gritty setting of a mining and labouring community to spin his own philosophy of life. Both authors ask us to believe that ordinary men and women spend a good deal of their time discussing the great philosophical issues relating to capital and labour, war and peace, self and society. I doubt if this really happens, but the characters in this book are memorable. They range from soldiers to scientists to researchers to doctors and manual workers. One of the central characters is Kostoglotov, one of many former soldiers sent to internal exile for challenging the authorities. He is the Russian Jimmy Reid, of Clyde shipbuiders fame. He will argue with anyone, on almost any subject. He knows he is right.Though we are now very familiar with the idea of oncology being a separate discipline of medicine, when this book was written even that nomenclature was new. The early pioneers of cancer treatment made some terrible mistakes, and these are laid bare in this book. Along the way, Solzhenitsyn manages to cover the siege of Stalingrad, how to design a functioning health care delivery system, what it is like to be a doctor with cancer, how difficult it can be to cement a loving relationship and how some individuals can retain the joy of living even in the most straitened of circumstances. Towards the end of the book he uses a visit to a zoo to paint a clever picture of life in the cancer ward and in the many prison camps of Russia.Smiling and happiness do not feature strongly in this novel, but a deep insight into the core of human nature is displayed in considerable detail.This book deserves to be on the "must read" list of any serious reader. As one who treated many patients with cancer, I was astonished at how much has changed in the 50 years since the book was written, but also by how much things have stayed the same.

This was the fifth book published by the author and in my view one of his best.I first heard of this title after reading ‘One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich’.The book is set in a clinic for cancer patients somewhere in Soviet controlled Uzbekistan in the mid 1950's, shortly after the death of Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin.Simply put, this book is a masterpiece and should be read by anyone who has a desire to understand life within a totalitarian Communist country.It is a great, great novel, undoubtedly one of the greatest.

I first read this book 30 years ago, and remembered that I loved it then. Very rich and full of detail, with characters expressing a range of viewpoints in relation to the stat in which they live. You are fairly sure what the opinions of the author are, but he never expresses them as the narrator. The downbeat setting of a cancer ward in 1950s soviet union is immensely powerful, as well as somewhat downbeat, but perhaps a chilling reminder that cancer treatment has not moved on from that time to anywhere near the extent that we might have hoped it would. Loving re-reading it almost as much as the first read three decades ago.

Gradually it comes through, the price and responsibilities of freedom. How easily both are lost. Reading the novel calls upon me to read more non-fiction works on 20th century Russia.No points deducted for the various typos, which seemed to become more prevalent as the book progressed.

I had not expected to enjoy the book as much as I did. Clearly the subject matter is such that you might expect the characters to be depressed and low. However Solzhenitsyn's fantastically well drawn cast display an acceptance of the grim realities of their situation so stoically that one quickly warms to them. This relationship with the characters, especially the roguish Oleg, grows as the book progresses until by the end you share his optimism for a better future.