Russian Nobel prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) is
widely acknowledged as one of the most important figures-and
perhaps the most important writer-of the last century. To celebrate
the centenary of his birth, the first English translation of his
memoir of the West, Between Two Millstones, Book 1, is being
published. Fast-paced, absorbing, and as compelling as the earlier
installments of his memoir The Oak and the Calf (1975), Between Two
Millstones begins on February 13, 1974, when Solzhenitsyn found
himself forcibly expelled to Frankfurt, West Germany, as a result
of the publication in the West of The Gulag Archipelago.
Solzhenitsyn moved to Zurich, Switzerland, for a time and was
considered the most famous man in the world, hounded by journalists
and reporters. During this period, he found himself untethered and
unable to work while he tried to acclimate to his new surroundings.
Between Two Millstones contains vivid descriptions of
Solzhenitsyn's journeys to various European countries and North
American locales, where he and his wife Natalia ("Alya") searched
for a location to settle their young family. There are fascinating
descriptions of one-on-one meetings with prominent individuals,
detailed accounts of public speeches such as the 1978 Harvard
University commencement, comments on his television appearances,
accounts of his struggles with unscrupulous publishers and agents
who mishandled the Western editions of his books, and the KGB
disinformation efforts to besmirch his name. There are also
passages on Solzhenitsyn's family and their property in Cavendish,
Vermont, whose forested hillsides and harsh winters evoked his
Russian homeland, and where he could finally work undisturbed on
his ten-volume dramatized history of the Russian Revolution, The
Red Wheel. Stories include the efforts made to assure a proper
education for the writer's three sons, their desire to return one
day to their home in Russia, and descriptions of his extraordinary
wife, editor, literary advisor, and director of the Russian Social
Fund, Alya, who successfully arranged, at great peril to herself
and to her family, to smuggle Solzhenitsyn's invaluable archive out
of the Soviet Union. Between Two Millstones is a literary event of
the first magnitude. The book dramatically reflects the pain of
Solzhenitsyn's separation from his Russian homeland and the chasm
of miscomprehension between him and Western society.
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