The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956
1973 · English translation by Thomas P. Whitney, 1974
Solzhenitsyn's history of the Soviet prison-camp system, built from his own imprisonment and the testimony of more than two hundred other prisoners: arrest, interrogation, trial and the camps themselves.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) called the book “an experiment in literary investigation”. He wrote it in secret, and it was first published in Paris in 1973. Its seven parts appear in three volumes. Volume 1 (Parts I–II) covers the “prison industry”: arrest, interrogation, and the system that moved prisoners through it.
The book is still under copyright, so no copy is kept here. Open Library lends the first volume.