Writing as a Political Act: The Works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Between 1962 and 1977, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn became the most famous writer in the world. A former political prisoner during the end of the Stalin era in the Soviet Union, he became in the 1960s the symbol of Soviet dissidence. His writings were banned in his own country, he was threatened with death or imprisonment, and his work was smuggled out of the Soviet Union to be published to world wide acclaim in the west. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize, but could not accept it for fear of not being allowed to return to Russia if he went to Stockholm. Finally, in 1974, he was expelled from the Soviet Union. He remained in exile until 1994, at which time he returned to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.He remained in Russia until his death in 2008. In the years since his death, his reputation has gone into decline and many of the English Language editions of his work are OOP. In later years he revised and expanded some of his work and authorized new translations.