In The First Circle

The thrilling cold war masterwork by the nobel prize winner, published in full for the first timeMoscow, Christmas Eve, 1949.The Soviet secret police intercept a call made to the American embassy by a Russian diplomat who promises to deliver secrets about the nascent Soviet Atomic Bomb program. On that same day, a brilliant mathematician is locked away inside a Moscow prison that houses the country`s brightest minds. He and his fellow prisoners are charged with using their abilities to sleuth out the caller`s identity, and they must choose whether to aid Joseph Stalin`s repressive state-or refuse and accept transfer to the Siberian Gulag camps . . . and almost certain death.First written between 1955 and 1958, In the First Circle is Solzhenitsyn`s fiction masterpiece. In order to pass through Soviet censors, many essential scenes-including nine full chapters-were cut or altered before it was published in a hastily translated English edition in 1968. Now with the help of the author`s most trusted translator, Harry T. Willetts, here for the first time is the complete, definitive English edition of Solzhenitsyn`s powerful and magnificent classic.