One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1962). The author draws on the eight years he spent in Soviet prisons to write this harrowing novel of the Soviet gulags. Inmates and prisoners are always cold, always hungry, always scheming for crumbs, and willing to betray each other for less in this Siberian labor camp. Though brutally dehumanized, many of Solzhenitsyn’s characters remain indomitable, making this novel an indictment of human nature and an ode to the human spirit.