The way I've heard that book described is not fact, but urban legends, or fairy tales, from the gulags that people have related. Like, it isn't accurate factually, but it encompasses the feelings of a few people (including the author) had about being there.
The way I've heard that book described is not fact, but urban legends, or fairy tales, from the gulags that people have related. Like, it isn't accurate factually, but it encompasses the feelings of a few people (including the author) had about being there.
His ex wife called it "folklore"
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/06/archives/solzhenitsyns-exwife-says-gulag-is-folklore.html
Yes this is the word I couldn't think of.
the subtitle is unironically An Experiment in Literary Investigation
"Surely this must be a serious scholastic work!"
-- arbitrary liberal, probably