The Gulag Archipelago

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I must explain that never once did this whole book, in all its parts, lie on the same desk at the same time! In September, 1965, when work on the Archipelago was at its most intensive, I suffered a setback: my archive was raided and a novel impounded. At this point the parts of the Archipelago already written, and the materials for the other parts, were scattered, and never reassembled: I could not take the risk, especially when all the names were given correctly. I kept jotting down reminders to myself to check this and remove that, and traveled from place to place with these bits of paper. The jerkiness of the book, its imperfections, are the true mark of our persecuted literature. Take the book for what it is.