@helenS The latest volume was recently made available through University of Notre Dame press....and l am reading it for the second time. My dad was also called Alexander.....he was a Hungarian political prisoner and he told me to read One Day in The Life...to let me understand how he lived after WW2. After that I read Cancer Ward...and then Gulag Archipelago Part One...came out and it all snowballed. On the right is Tchaikovsky. I have listened to every single one of his compositions....have 99% on vinyl or CD. 😁
@Vetrov This is really impressive. I read "only" Archipelago vol 1. I understood it was very important at the time when it was published; the book basically caused left-wing intellectuals in Western Europe to abandon communism.
@helenS I also read Arthur Koestler...at an even earlier age...Darkness at Noon.
I was maybe nine or ten.
I vividly remember the scene where Rubashovs secretary Arlova...tells him that he could sleep with her and that she would always let him do anything he wanted.
I didn’t understand what was happening but l understood that it was something really important and l was exited by it.
@Vetrov I read that book too, and I was already 20 something. I fully understand you became excited as a ten-year-old, even though it's not exactly an erotic novel. The first book with "explicit" scenes that I read was "God's Little Acre", by Erskine Caldwell, when I was about 13.
@helenS My dad had lots of books l would read....l now regret reading The Naked and The Dead, Catch 22 as a ten year old....other important novels too....my dad had a huge collection of Sci Fi paperbacks...read all those....my other love is J G Ballard....have read everything of his.
@Vetrov Oh I've never been a big fan of SciFi "literature". The one I've read is "Starship Troopers", by R. A. Heinlein, and I was appalled at the adulation of militarism or should I say fascism in the book. I've never read anything by Mailer.
