The great Russian author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, died yesterday at the age of 89. His life and struggle should be viewed as an inspiration to anyone who wants to write. Some interesting facts about him:
When he criticized Stalin in a personal letter to a friend in 1945, he was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. Three years later, he was sent to live in exile in Kazakhstan, where he wrote his first novel. He memorized most of what he wrote so that it wouldn't be lost if it were seized.
His work was originally banned in Russia and after he was finally able to return to his homeland, most of his countrymen had never read any of his books.
And yet, despite his hardship and suffering, he never stopped writing. He was award the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970. Here is what Solzhenitsyn had to say about his writing:
"During all the years until 1961," Solzhenitsyn wrote in an autobiography written for the Nobel Foundation, "not only was I convinced that I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared that this would become known."
To learn more about this wonderful author, go to:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080804/ap_on_en_ot/obit_solzhenitsyn
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