This is the first time I actually read the introduction to a book, possibly because I felt–and was right–that the backstory and setting that held the needed information would be here, rather than interwoven in the narrative. Doing so immediately made me aware of a metaphorical passage in the beginning of the novel that related to the larger story behind it.
Shukhov decided to report sick.
At that very moment his blanket and jacket were imperiously jerked off him. He flung his coat away from hs face and sat up. Looking up at him, the head level with the top bunk, was the lean figure of The Tartar.
"S 854," The Tartar read from the white strip tht had ben stitched to the back of his black jacket. "Three days’ penalty with work." (p. 21)
The author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, wrote this first novel many years after his 8-year incarceration in a labor camp for an anti-Stalin remark he may have made. This, after having proudly served in the Russian army during WWII. In the novel, the protagonist, Ivan Denisovich is in such a camp, and as the story opens, he, who has always risen immediately at reveille to take advantage of the 90 minutes of "free" time before the workday begins, remains in bed because he is tired and achy this single morning.
The clever way that Solzhenitsyn opens the book with an unjustified punishment for an imagined infraction sets the tone for what is to come.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology