Mon 24 October 2011
Book Launch
Apricot Jam & Other Stories
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Stephan Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author’s son and translator, will discuss his father’s life and work with renowned academic Dr Rachel Polonsky.

‘In terms of the effect he has had on history, Solzhenitsyn is the dominant writer of [the twentieth] century’ – David Remnick, New Yorker

The final work of fiction from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, available in English for the first time.

Written in the years between Solzhenitsyn’s return to Russia from exile in 1994 and his death in 2008, these stories confirm the author’s position as the most eloquent and acclaimed opponent of government oppression in the twentieth century and as a true literary giant. With an unforgettable cast of military commanders, imprisoned activists and displaced families, these stories play out the moral dilemmas and ideological conflicts that defined Russia in the twentieth century.

- A previously undiscovered work of fiction from a Nobel Prize-winning author

- The collection contains a glossary, created by Solzhenitsyn, linking fictional characters to their real-life counterparts including prison guards, inmates and political figures

- Publication will be supported by a visit to the UK from Solzhenitsyn’s son Stephan, who was involved in the collection’s translation

‘One of the greatest writers of his time’ – Guardian

‘A remarkable human being, a visionary, a crusader in the simplest sense, who was steered in his writing, as in his actions, by a deep sense of justice’ – Daily Telegraph

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, and his work continues to receive international acclaim. Through his writings, particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union’s forced labour camp system. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and returned to Russia in 1994. He died on 2 August 2008. The stories have been translated by Kenneth Lantz and Stephan Solzhenitsyn.

Organised and presented by Canongate Books