the first circle Author:Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr He is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a graduate of the Soviet's most elite prisons. He writes novels- shocking, brutal, epic novels. The world describes him as the living Tolstoy. But the Soviet Union calls him something else. They ban his books. Denounce him. Persecute him. Even though he won the Nobel Prize for literature.One of his most shattering ... more »novels is THE FIRST CIRCLE, a macabre vision off a twentieth-century inferno.It is the story of the men and women who discover that Hell is alive and burning fiercely. Here the innocent are incarcerated to live the outrages of the condemned. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did. Now the great novel that was smuggled out of Russia is on the screen. It is in every sense a triumph.« less