Cancer Ward

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 1918–2008 · Russia

Originally Rakovy Korpus (Russian)

Why it matters

Patients in a Soviet cancer ward argue life, death, and the state that shaped them. Solzhenitsyn turns a hospital into an allegory of a nation, and illness into a reckoning with how a good life is lived.

At a glance

A large ensemble of patients trades lengthy ideological dialogue within a single setting.