Cancer Ward

novel by Solzhenitsyn

Also known as: “Rakovy korpus”

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Article History

Cancer Ward, novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Though banned in the Soviet Union, the work was published in 1968 by Italian and other European publishers in the Russian language as Rakovy korpus. It was also published in English translation in 1968.

Solzhenitsyn based Cancer Ward on his own hospitalization and successful treatment for supposedly terminal cancer during his forced exile in Kazakhstan in the mid-1950s. The novel’s iconoclastic main character is Oleg Kostoglotov, like the author a recently released inmate of the brutal forced labour camps. His fellow patients in the provincial city hospital are a microcosm of Soviet society.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.