Solzhenitsyn

1082 Pages·1984·51.52 MB·English

by  Michael Scammell

FPT ISBN 0-3T3-0:LA02-M > $2^5
Solzhenitsyn
A BIOGRAPHY
Michael Scammell
Millions know the name of Russia’s most
famous living novelist, and the world
watched for years as he waged his single-
handed struggle against the might of the
Soviet government. In the end he was expel¬
led, but not before he had written his searing
exposure of Stalin’s labor camps. The Gulag
Archipelago, and been awarded the highest
honor a writer can hope for, the Nobel Prize
for Literature.
Few realize, however, that from his earliest
days, when he was born, fatherless, in the
midst of the Russian civil war, Solzhenitsyn’s
life was every bit as dramatic as one of his
novels. Here is the first full biography of this
towering, controversial figure, and it illumi¬
nates not only the personal triumphs and
crises but the complex historical and cultural
background, against which Solzhenitsyn’s
life emerges as emblematic of the history of
Russia in the twentieth century.
Much of the material in this book is new
and was made available to the author by Sol¬
zhenitsyn and his family. Solzhenitsyn was
interviewed at length, but this is not an autho¬
rized biography.
JACKET DESIGN BY JAY J. SMITH
JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY GILBERT UZAN, GAMMA/LIAISON
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SOLZHENITSYN
Solzhenitsyn during his first months as a prisoner (Sevil)