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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918 and grew up in Rostov-on-Don. He graduated in physics and mathematics from Rostov University and studied literature by correspondence course at Moscow University. In World War II he fought as an artillery officer, attaining the rank of captain. In 1945, however, after making derogatory remarks about Stalin in a letter, he was arrested and summarily sentenced to eight years in forced labour camps, followed by internal exile. In 1957 he formally rehabilitated, and settled down to teaching and writing. The publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Novy Mir in 1962 was followed by publication, in the West, of his novels Cancer Ward and The First Circle. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 1974 his citizenship was revoked and he was expelled from the Soviet Union. He settled in Vermont and worked on his great historical cycle The Red Wheel. In 1990, with the fall of Soviet Communism, his citizenship was restored and four years later he returned to settle in Russia.
Solzhenitsyn's little book on the Soviet camps, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, has just been reissued, in a much-improved translation by Harry Willetts. It remains a devastating book - a classical tragedy... Solzhenitsyn is a genius and a hero: Ivan Denisovich stands with Animal Farm. * Guardian * For much of the century that he came to dominate, he was simply Russia's greatest writer * Guardian * A masterpiece in the great Russian tradition. There have been many literary sensations since Stalin died. Doctor Zhivago apart, few of them can stand up in their own right as works of art. Ivan Denisovich is different -- Leonard Schapiro * New Statesman *
