One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This is what happened to Ivan Denisovich, a prisoner in a Stalinist work camp in Siberia, through a cold January day. The writing is simple, straightforward, and not sentimental. However, from the first page, you will forget the presentation of words. You are Ivan Denisovich, in coldness, hunger, calculating the "best" way to get through one of those thousands of days. The reading experience is indescribable.

Where does such cruelty comes from? We know the bloodiness in Nature when lives compete with and pray on each other. However, it is human beings that exercise cruelty far beyond that, and promotes it as a pure pleasure.

This is a handsome book from Everyman's library, published in 1995, ISBN 0679444645. Translated by H.T. Willetts.