I read this whilst working at a grim factory job, initially thinking “Ugh, this is the worst thing to be reading given my circumstances”. The more I read though, the more I realized it was exactly what I should be reading (to illustrate that the bad things weren’t specific to the place, they just sprang from human nature in dire situations)
I picked it up as part of idea to buy novellas to try to get myself back into reading books (which mostly worked).
One of my favorite books; I had a really cool English teacher. Check out “the gulag argeplego” by the same author if you have the time