Cancer Building

Author: (Russian) Solzhenitsyn
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-03-01
Features: This is a work filled with symbols and metaphors. "The Cancer Ward is also called Building No. 13." After years of life in the army, labor camps, and exile, Kostogorov contracted cancer and finally managed to get into the Cancer Ward only when he was on his deathbed. After undergoing radiation treatment, his condition gradually improved. However, the next course of "hormone therapy" would leave him sterile. During his long years of labor camp, exile, and enduring injustice, he had long forgotten about women. When he arrived at the "Cancer Ward" for treatment, his sexual awareness was awakened, and intense desires, primal urges, became signs of his restored vitality.