Posted on 09/25/2016 1:35:53 AM PDT by beaversmom
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His speech at Harvard’s commencement in 1978 is also a keeper.
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His semi-autographical novel CANCER WARD is my favorite novel. On one level it is about patients facing their mortality within the cold medical system of the Soviet Union. On a deeper level it is about life itself.
Just think of all that Solzhenitsyn lived through and accomplished.
He was an artillery officer in fighting the Germans. He was an arrestee and served a sentence in the Gulag. He was a teacher in internal exile. He was a cancer patient with a bleak prognosis. He had a breakthrough novel that came to the attention of Nikita Khrushchev who allowed (temporarily) this book about life in the Gulag to be published in the Soviet Union. ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH became an international sensation. He smuggled other novels out of the Soviet Union. He was exiled from the Soviet Union but he vowed to return. He was an unpopular resident (unpopular among American Liberals) of New England. He returned to the Soviet Union. He was given a funeral that rivaled an opulent state funeral.
Gulag permanently changed my political outlook—it opened my eyes. Day in the Life is an easier introduction to his writing. Cancer Ward and August 1914 are also well worth a read.
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