Drawing on his personal experience, The Nobel Prize-winning author sets his play in a Stalinist slave camo in 1945. The "Innocent" is a new arrival to the camp who is reluctant to adopt the sordid techniques of survival. His love for Lyuba, one of the many girls forced by circumstances to sell themselves for privileges and rations, tempts him to compromise with himself and betray his moral and emotional loyalties.

          Solzhenitsyn’s terrifying picture of the despair and degradation suffered under a merciless camp regime had already reached dress-rehearsal stage in Moscow before it was banned by the authorities.