There is true equality in misery, but other than that, the representatives of different social layers in the state have a collection of very diverse stories to tell.

But some fears grow with knowledge - and the Cancer Ward plays on exactly that kind of human terror.Īlthough it is meant to be a metaphorical story, indicating the macrocosm of the state in the microcosm of the ward, there is no real need for symbolism in the frustratingly hopeless cancer ward, where people with desperate diagnoses gather without any previous connection or anything in common except for the silent killer they have discovered within their bodies. Some childhood fears disappear, or turn into nostalgic feelings or humorous memories. Now, some twenty-five years later, I know so much more about all those topics that frightened me back then - and they scare me even more today, knowing their true impact. The ensuing problem - nightmares I could not talk about, as I had read the book in secret - made me try to forget it for the time being. I was a young teenager, and had been told that this might be a bit too difficult for me to take from my parents' bookshelf - which constituted a natural invitation to do exactly that of course. At the time when I first read this, I didn't know much of the Soviet Union, or of writers' fate within that state, or of cancer and its silent, treacherous spread in secret weak spots of the body.

Cancer ward by alexander solzhenitsyn