“All the lamps were dim, and the huts cast black shadows. The entrance to the mess hut was up four steps and across a wide porch, also now in the shadows. But a little lamp swayed above it, squeaking in the cold. Frost, or dirt, gave every lightbulb a rainbow-coloured halo.”

—Alexander Solzhenitsyn, from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 1978; translated from the Russian by H.T. Willetts, 1991.