RIP Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Let's try to be a bit less trivial today, shall we? I am going to blog about some big piece of literature, instead of the lesser works I usually blog about. I just learned that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died yesterday. His death does not come up at a surprise, as he was very old, but it is still quite sad. I read only one book of him, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but it marked me. That was a genuine masterpiece, a simple (yet so efficient in its simplicity) account of a day in a gulag. No dramatisation, however grim was the account there was nothing to cry on, the novel/novella was just the monotonous suffering of a prisoner in a repressive regime. The tone was grim, still it was deliciously ironic. The book was nott only a very efficient denunciation of Soviet Russia, it was a brilliant piece of writing. So RIP to a great, great writer. We don't have many of them left, so even at 89 of age, his departure is a great loss.