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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward
Cancer Ward is a semiautobiographical novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who won the Nobel Prize in Litrature “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.” Like Solzhenitsyn, the protagonist of Cancer Ward is a Russian World War II veteran who served time in the Gulag (Soviet forced labor camps) because of careless remarks about Stalin and who then faced internal exile, got a cancer diagnosis, and was treated for the cancer at a hospital in Tashkent. However, the protagonist of Cancer Ward was born in Leningrad (Solzhenitsyn was born in the North Caucasus region) and was unmarried.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center — Cancer Ward
Cancer Ward addresses the problems of illness and death, but it gives immediacy to the question of the meaning of life. As one medical journal article explained:
The prospect of love and life helps the protagonist patient psychologically through his disease.
Solzhenitsyn had a form of testicular cancer (malignant seminoma) that had already spread. Fortunately, his treatment involved a therapeutic dose of what is now an approved chemotherapy drug, which had been made by soaking a mandrake root in vodka. Did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Cure His Own Testicular Cancer?
