Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) is among the greatest Russian and world writers of the 20th century. He survived the second world war, incarceration for political infractions in the Soviet UnionâÛªs prison-camp system (which he characterised as the âÛÏgulag archipelagoâÛù), and internal exile to produce a series of novels and essays that retrieved and reimagined the history of the Soviet state and the experience of its people. His major works include A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), The First Circle (1968), Cancer Ward (1968), The Gulag Archipelago (three volumes, 1974-76), and The Oak and the Calf (1975). Alexander Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1970, and was deported to the west in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994 and died near Moscow on 3 August 2008