The author himself preferred to call his book a story. And the fact that in modern literary criticism Solzhenitsyn’s "Cancer Corps" is most often called a novel, speaks only about the conventionality of the boundaries of literary forms. But too many meanings and images turned out to be tied in this narrative into a single life knot in order to consider the author's designation of the genre of the work true. This book is one of those that require a return to their pages in an attempt to understand what slipped away at the first acquaintance. There is no doubt the multidimensionality of this work. Solzhenitsyn’s “Cancer Corps” is a book about life, death, and fate, but with all this, it’s called “easy to read”. The everyday and plot series here in no way contradict the philosophical depth and figurative expressiveness.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Cancer Corps. Events and People
At the center of the story are doctors and patients. In a small oncology department, separately standing in the courtyard of the Tashkent city hospital, those who met fate put a black mark on cancer and those who are trying to help them met. It's no secret that the author himself went through everything that he describes in his book. A small two-story cancer building Solzhenitsyn and to this day stands in the same place in the same city. The Russian writer portrayed him from nature very recognizable, because this is the real part of his biography. The irony of fate brought in one chamber clear antagonists who were equal before the impending death. This is the main character, a front-line soldier, a former prisoner and exiled Oleg Kostoglotov, in which the author himself can easily guess.
He is opposed by the petty bureaucratic Soviet careerist Pavel Rusanov, who has achieved his position by devout service to the system and writing denunciations of those who disturbed him or simply did not like him. Now these people are in the same room. Hopes for recovery are very ephemeral for them. Many medicines have been tested and one can only rely on traditional medicine, such as the chaga mushroom growing somewhere in Siberia on birches. No less interesting are the fates of the other inhabitants of the chamber, but they recede into the background before the confrontation of the two main characters. Within the cancerous corps, the life of all inhabitants passes between despair and hope. And the author himself managed to defeat the disease even when it seemed that there was nothing more to hope for. He lived a very long and interesting life after leaving the oncology department of the Tashkent hospital.
Book history
Solzhenitsyn’s book "Cancer Corps" was released only in 1990, at the end of perestroika. Attempts to publish it in the Soviet Union have been undertaken by the author before. Separate chapters were being prepared for publication in the New World magazine in the early 60s of the XX century, while Soviet censorship did not make out the conceptual artistic design of the book. Solzhenitsyn’s “cancer case” is not just the oncology department of the hospital, it’s something much bigger and more sinister. Soviet people had to read this work in Samizdat, but for just reading it one could greatly suffer.