A review by carl_floodingisland
The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

5.0

Solzhenitsyn's First Circle is a work of history, which describes the strange and terrible forced intellectual labor system of Stalin, where Stalin compelled engineers and scientists to create technology to be used for war and espionage, and if they refused he sent them to forced physical labor. The title is from Dante's Inferno, where Dante describes 9 levels of hell, with the 9th level as the worst, and the 1st level as almost not hell. It is a book of history and story, and a study of ethics and how difficult it can be do do the right thing.