Apricot Jam - by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Paperback)

About the Book

In a series of stories written after the Nobel Prize-winning author's return from exile to Russia, and published now for the first time in English, the author explores both Soviet and post-Soviet life.

Book Synopsis

After years of living in exile, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994 and published a series of eight powerfully paired stories. These groundbreaking stories-- interconnected and juxtaposed using an experimental method Solzhenitsyn referred to as "binary"--join Solzhenitsyn's already available work as some of the most powerful literature of the twentieth century.

With Soviet and post-Soviet life as their focus, they weave and shift inside their shared setting, illuminating the Russian experience under the Soviet regime. In "The Upcoming Generation," a professor promotes a dull but proletarian student purely out of good will. Years later, the same professor finds himself arrested and, in a striking twist of fate, his student becomes his interrogator. In "Nastenka," two young women with the same name lead routine, ordered lives--until the Revolution exacts radical change on them both.

The most eloquent and acclaimed opponent of government oppression, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, and his work continues to receive international acclaim. Available for the first time in English, Apricot Jam: And Other Stories is a striking example of Solzhenitsyn's singular style and only further solidifies his place as a true literary giant/

Review Quotes

Praise for Apricot Jam

"A haunting meditation on [Solzenhitsyn's] lifetime's dominant theme . . . Solzhenitsyn writes in bracing prose, eschewing artifice." --Financial Times

"The best stories in this collection stand among Solzhenitsyn's best work, and present a depth seldom found in the short story form . . . these latest stories are a significant contribution to his work available in English." --Full-Stop.net

"Via fiction he interrogates history, and reveals truth." --RIA Novosti

About the Author

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk in the northern Caucusus Mountains. He received a degree in physics and math from Rostov University in 1941. He served in the Russian army during World War II but was arrested in 1945 for writing a letter criticizing Stalin. He spent the next decade in prisons and labor camps and, later, exile, before being allowed to return to central Russia, where he worked as a high school science teacher. His first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, was published in 1962. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1974, he was arrested for treason and exiled following the publication of The Gulag Archipelago. He moved to Switzerland and later the U. S. where he continued to write fiction and history.