tripu's Reviews > Un día en la vida de Iván Denisovich

I think my translation into Spanish was truly horrible, and that detracted from the experience. There were missing accents, even. Perhaps that's why I can't give it four stars.

The kernel of this little book is moving and shocking. We know it's first-hand experience, and that makes it even more valuable.

The story serves as proof of the principle of hedonic adaptation: when life is truly horrendous and miserable for years; and you toil at -30°C from before dawn to after dusk; battling louse, starvation, disease and violence; all for two bowls of watery soup and a loaf of bread a day… then that's your baseline for well-being, and tiny “improvements” over that that would seem laughable to you and me feel like pure bliss and can make a day wonderful (in comparison). Things such as getting a second serving of soup, saving enough to buy a few cigarettes, or finding in the snow a rusty piece of metal that one can polish for hours to build a rudimentary knife or a rudimentary needle. That kind of “luxuries”. It's amazing.

As a literary work, it's not remarkable in itself, I guess. Well written (to the extent I can tell reading a bad translation), and it does what it says on the tin. But boy, what a historical document…