Is The Gulag Archipelago available as an ebook?

[Waylander]

Is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago available to buy as an ebook anywhere? I'd really like to read it but can't find the kindle edition on either Amazon.co.uk or .com.

[AnotherCat]

As far as I know there is no eBook of the complete 3 Volumes of close to 2,000 pages but I believe that the text is available at archive.org but without the numerous notes (the 3 volumes also exist there in scanned PDF format).

The abridged version of the book, which is the only one most people are aware of and not realising that it is in fact abridged, was available from Random House as an eBook in, at least, epub format (Epub ISBN 9781448128624). I have had the epub for some years and I do not know if it is still available nor where I purchased it.

I realise you want it for a Kindle, in which case you would have to convert it.

[HarryT]

It appears to be available as a 3-volume ebook on Amazon UK, but the very low price makes me suspect it's been put together from some perhaps unofficial source? It certainly isn't in the public domain, so I'd be wary of its legitimacy.

[Waylander]

I saw those cheap Amazon UK versions and they don't look legit to me, which was confirmed by the fact that they've been under quality review for rubbish formatting. Thanks AnotherCat, I'll look on Random House for the abridged version, as that's better than nothing while I'm waiting for the full three volumes to be converted to ebook.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Waylander

I saw those cheap Amazon UK versions and they don't look legit to me, which was confirmed by the fact that they've been under quality review for rubbish formatting.

They're probably created from the "raw" OCR at archive.org. Unfortunately, although archive.org is a wonderful resource, it does have a fair amount of content which breaches copyright, which these books certainly appear to, given that Solzhenitsyn only died in 2008.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by HarryT

...Unfortunately, although archive.org is a wonderful resource, it does have a fair amount of content which breaches copyright, which these books certainly appear to, given that Solzhenitsyn only died in 2008.

I am not making any claim with respect to this book, I just do not know, but one must keep in mind that it is not unusual for important works to be to some extent put into the public domain by their rights holders. So the author's birthdate, etc. is not 100% reliable as an indicator of constraint.

In the case of Gulag Archipelago I would not be surprised (but again I do not know) that given the samizdat history of the manuscript in the USSR and free distribution the West in loose typed form before publication, if the text itself is pretty much at large and so OK to use (at least for personal use)

Waylander:

While we can live in hope I would be surprised if the 3 volume complete version of the book is ever available as an eBook, especially one with all the notes linked to the text (there must be way more than a thousand of those).

A possibility is that it does exist legitimately on some academic web site (I have never searched myself) for reading with the HTML available, or even an unformatted machine generated epub from that. I have a number of times grabbed such for important works I had an interest in and whipped it into an eBook. It is not uncommon that, if rights still exist over the work, it is explicitly stated that permission has been granted for non-commercial use of the material.