One of the best Russian novels of the 20th century, very good example of the first volume of the first English edition. There were two more volumes published over the next four years.

'The Gulag Archipelago has long been a part of the great canon of Russian literature. It is undoubtedly Solzhenitsyn's masterpiece and the work for which he will be best remembered. Solzhenitsyn had originally intended to publish in 1969 soon after it was completed but he then changed his mind. His hand was eventually forced after the KGB discovered a copy of one of the typescripts in August 1973. A microfilm of The Gulag Archipelago had been sent to the West a few years earlier and after the discovery of the typescript in Moscow, he ordered YMCA Press to go to print in order to forestall any possible machinations by the KGB.

First edition, first issue, parts I-II in one vol., 8vo; green cloth gilt, original red printed dust-jacket, corners bumped and a little worn at edges, a very good copy.