The Love-Girl and the Innocent

London: The Bodley Head. Very Good/Very Good. 1969. First Edition. Hard Cloth Cover. 12mo 0370013212 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Green cloth with gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. 131 pages clean and tight. The action of this four-act play is set in a Stalinist labour camp similar to the one where Solzhenitsyn himself served an eight-year term. The `Innocent' of the title is a new prisoner who doesn't know what's what or how to survive. He falls in love with a girl (`love-girl' is camp slang for a girl who sells her favours for privileges or extra rations) who warns him that in the labour camp integrity is the passport to death. He tries desperately to keep his honour and self-respect; she tries to convince him that to survive one must be ready to sin a little. Finally he realises that the only way he can have her is by sharing her with one of the high-ups in the camp. He will then have extra food, a comfortable job, and the woman he loves. All he has to do is to make that one compromise. The love story is only a small part of the play, which is also a vivid and frightening picture of camp life with its complicated hierarchies, its bribery, `fiddling', `lead-swinging' and cruelty. There is a large cast, ranging from the camp commandant to the `goners' - prisoners who have lost all interest in life. It is an unforgettable picture of Camp-land, `that famous country where ninety-nine men weep while one man laughs'. This is the first publication of The Love-Girl and the Innocent in any language. It reached dress-rehearsal stage in Moscow, but was banned by the authorities at the last moment. It has never been publicly performed. .