Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died near Moscow at the age of 89. There's a bit of confusion around how he died- was it a heart attack or a stroke? I must confess that I assumed he was already dead. So reports of his death come as a bit of a surprise to me.
I read One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich when I was 16 and it profoundly moved me. It was this crushing novel of detail and mind numbing pain. It does exactly what it says. It's one day in a gulag and it's a vision of hell.
I think that this is one of the five novels that convinced me that literature could change the world and that there's hope for us all. I'll probably talk about the five novels to change the world elsewhere...
But for now, I mourn the passing of a giant. There won't be one like him again.
technomist
A great writer. 'A day in the life' was brilliant.
He came to be known mostly for the critique of the soviet era, but he also wrote blisteringly about earlier times, as in 'Lenin in Zurich'. 'August 1914' is up there for me with War and Peace.