![cover image of The First Circle](https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0211-1/6E0/66F/EA/{6E066FEA-D0B5-444A-987F-A0B38835CC96}Img400.jpg)
Sign up to save your library
With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.
Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.
![LibbyDevices.png](https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt3d151d94546d0edd/blt96637953bca8f11b/642dbad30afb1c108e793645/LibbyDevices.png)
Search for a digital library with this title
Title found at these libraries:
Loading... |
At the height of Stalin's postwar terror, Innokenty, a young diplomat and scion of a corrupt ruling class, discovers an earlier and more spiritual tradition than that adopted by the October Revolution, the beginning of a process which is Solzhenitsyn's basic theme: the individual's experience of acquiring an immortal soul.
Unwisely but generously, Innokenty helps a friend in danger of arrest, only to be arrested himself and sent to a special prison. This, the archetype of the Gulag, is described with masterful psychological insight. There are no heroes and hardly any villains; oppressors are no less victims then the oppressed.
In the great tradition of the Russian novel, The First Circle is both a brooding account of human nature and a scrupulously exact description of a historical period.