A review by amolotkov
Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, David Burg, Nicholas Bethell

5.0

A compassionate, psychologically nuanced novel. A cancer clinic in the early 1950s USSR, where radiation is one of the few available tools and common practice is not to share prognosis and details with patients. The patients' and doctors' worries and soul-searching are presented against a backdrop of the first year or two after Stalin's death, when things begin to thaw out a bit, but these changes are perceived very differently by those who suffered and those who caused suffering. Many fascinating edges in one book.