Discipline and Punish vs Архипелаг ГУЛАГ: Which Should You Read?
Both live on shelves: Prisons, History, Fiction
Discipline and Punish
“On 2 March 1757 Damiens the regicide condemmed 'to make the amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris', where he was to be 'taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds'; then, 'in the said cart, to the place de Greve, where, on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms,”
English version of "Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison"
vs
Архипелаг ГУЛАГ
“How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago?”
The Gulag Archipelago is Solzhenitsyn's masterwork, a vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators and also of heroism, a Stalinist anti-world at the heart…
The verdict
- Ratings are close across the board — any is a safe pick by score.
- Discipline and Punish is the quickest read — about 6 hours vs 12 for Архипелаг ГУЛАГ.
- Discipline and Punish has the widest readership — 62 ratings behind its score.
Scores by source
| Discipline and Punish | Архипелаг ГУЛАГ | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 4.2 (62) | — |
| Google Books | — | 5.0 (1) |
| Apple Books | 4.0 (24) | — |
Reception
| Discipline and Punish | Архипелаг ГУЛАГ | |
|---|---|---|
| Ratings | 62 | 17 |
| Editions | 30 | 88 |
| Film adaptations | 1 | 1 |
| Wikipedia attention | 6210 | 16248 |
| Pages | 333 | 660 |