The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005

This reader, compiled by renowned Solzhenitsyn scholars Edward E. Ericson, Jr., and Daniel J. Mahoney in collaboration with the Solzhenitsyn family, provides in one volume a rich and representative selection of Solzhenitsyn's voluminous works. Reproduced in their entirety are early poems, early and late short stories, early and late "miniatures" (or prose poems), and many of Solzhenitsyn’s famous—and not-so-famous—essays and speeches. The volume also includes excerpts from Solzhenitsyn's great novels, memoirs, books of political analysis and historical scholarship, and the literary and historical masterpieces The Gulag Archipelago and The Red Wheel. More than one-quarter of the material has never before appeared in English (the author’s sons prepared many of the new translations themselves).

The Solzhenitsyn Reader reveals a writer of genius, an intransigent opponent of ideological tyranny and moral relativism, and a thinker and moral witness who is acutely sensitive to the great drama of good and evil that takes place within every human soul. It will be for many years the definitive Solzhenitsyn collection.

           Edward E. Ericson, Jr. is professor of English, emeritus, at Calvin College. A longtime Solzhenitsyn scholar, he is editor of the authorized abridgment of The Gulag Archipelago (1985, 2002) and author of Solzhenitsyn: The Moral Vision(1980) and  Solzhenitsyn and the Modern World (1993).

           Daniel J. Mahoney is Professor of Political Science at Assumption College in Worcester, MA. An expert on French political philosophy and anti-totalitarian thought, his books include: The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron: A Critical Introduction(1992) ; De Gaulle: Statesmanship, Grandeur, and Modern Democracy(1996 and 2000); Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology(2001); and Bertrand de Jouvenel: The Conservative Liberal and the Illusions of Modernity(2005).