One of my favorite authors has died. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918 and served as witness to the entire span of Soviet rule in Russia. He was imprisoned for anti-Soviet propaganda, followed by exile in Siberia. His experiences were the basis for his novels, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, The First Circle, and others. His magnum opus was a the 3-volume tome The Gulag Archipelago. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 and was deported from the Soviet Union in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994.
Reading Solzhenitsyn was one of the few things that could keep me inside the dorm during college. He sparked my interest in Russian history as well as global politics and the philosophy of evil. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was 89.
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I first read the Gulag Archipelago when I was about 12. I loved it then and I love it now. Alexandr was a brilliant author who was able to capture the essence of humanity in his works. He will be missed.