"Reveille was sounded, as always, at 5 A.M .... "

So begins another day for Ivan Denisovich in a forced labor camp in Siberia, in a pitch-dark room filled with two hundred men, stacked four bunks high. Usually he gets up and finds one of the numerous ways to earn more food, but this morning he's sick. Not sick enough to know he can't work, but sick enough to wonder if he can. He plans on going to the infirmary, but a mean guard, the thin Tartar, catches him in his bunk and sentences him to solitary confinement for three days. Fortunately for Ivan, he only has him mop the floor of the warders' office. Inside the warders check the thermometer. If it is lower than forty below zero, the men won't have to work outside. It registers sixteen degrees below, but the men know it isn't accurate...