Cancer Ward

Zusatztext

he plot focuses on a group of patients as they undergo crude and frightening treatment in a squalid hospital. Writer and literary critic Jeffrey Meyers writes that the novel is the "most complete and accurate fictional account of the nature of disease and its relation to love. It describes the characteristics of cancer; the physical, psychological, and moral effects on the victim; the conditions of the hospital; the relations of patients and doctors; the terrifying treatments; the possibility of death." Kostoglotov's central question is what life is worth, and how we know when we have paid too much for it.[9]

The novel is partly autobiographical. Kostoglotov is admitted to hospital for cancer treatment from internal perpetual exile in Kazakhstan, as was Solzhenitsyn. In a chapter called "The Root From Issyk-Kul," Kostoglotov's doctor discovers a vial of dark fluid in his bedside table, prompting Kostoglotov to explain that it's an extract of a root used by natural healers in Russia to cure cancer. Solzhenitsyn himself ingested the same root extract before his cancer went into remission.[10] Kostoglotov is depicted as having been born in Leningrad, whereas Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk. © A. Solzhenitsyn; ©& IE Vorobev V.A.; ©& Publishing House Soyuz

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