Awards

• Winner of A Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2019 (United States)
• Winner of Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2019 (United States)

Overview

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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Reviews

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn took to Vermont, and Vermonters took to him. I felt it a privilege to have met with him in his new Vermont setting, and I know that our state's forested beauty reminded him of home. We are proud that he believed that his homeland, and the world, could learn from the local self-government that is embodied in Town Meeting Day in towns and hamlets across the Green Mountain State. --Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) Like the man himself, the translated memoir of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is an indispensable part of history. Solzhenitsyn's words, now accessible to English readers for the first time, are a lasting testimony to his unbending moral courage, his persistence, and his persuasiveness--all of which helped bring down Communism. --Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense (1975-1977, 2001-2006) Between Two Millstones picks up the story of Solzhenitsyn's remarkable and courageous literary and personal life where The Oak and the Calf and Invisible Allies, his two earlier memoirs, left off. It is a tale of the first stirrings of freedom in the West mixed with the fear of further Soviet retribution, the unceasing demands of celebrity, frustration with the Western elite's commercialism, secularism, and legalism, and the personal desire to be left alone to complete his most important literary project, The Red Wheel. --New York Journal of Books [T]his first volume of Solzhenitsyn's memoirs (the second will cover 1978 to 1994) recounts the 1970 Nobel Prize winner's efforts to create a life after being expelled from the Soviet Union following publication in France of The Gulag Archipelago. . . . Solzhenitsyn's memoir will intrigue . . . with its glimpses into the everyday life of a onetime giant in the world of letters. --Publishers Weekly Between Two Millstones describes the years when Solzhenitsyn, banished but unbowed, defied Western decadence as eloquently as he had Soviet brutality. --Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard Solzhenitsyn's account of his early years of exile is informed by a refusal to be swept along by the swift-moving currents of modernity and an ever-increasing awareness of the West's loss of a moral compass. It should be high on the reading list of every thinking American. --Lee Congdon, author of Solzhenitsyn: The Historical-Spiritual Destinies of Russia and the West For those wishing to know more about the literary genius and political giant who was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, this autobiographical account of his years of exile in the West is a wish come true. Up until now, we have only had Solzhenitsyn's account of his years as a dissident in the Soviet Union, prior to his expulsion from his homeland. As for the years from 1974 to 1994, we have had to content ourselves with mere scraps and fragments. Now, at long last, we are being served the feast for which we have hungered. --Joseph Pearce, author of Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile These 'sketches of life in exile' were written during the events described and are informed with the same energy and vivid powers of description that characterized Solzhenitsyn's acclaimed memoir The Oak and the Calf. Between Two Millstones has appeared in Russian, French, German, Italian, and Romanian, but not in the country where Solzhenitsyn spent eighteen years of his western exile. It is one of the great memoirs of our time and a distinguished work of art in its own right. --Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College As a former political prisoner fresh out of the USSR, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was consumed with the desire of making the West see the dangers of communism. But an increasing number of Western commentators found his views too harsh in this respect, as well as 'insufficiently liberal' in general. Controversies concerning Solzhenitsyn began erupting with ever greater frequency, reaching a crescendo of sorts after the Harvard speech. In Between Two Millstones, Solzhenitsyn revisits these polemical battles with gusto and in fascinating detail. --Alexis Klimoff, emeritus, Vassar College

These 'sketches of life in exile' were written during the events described and are informed with the same energy and vivid powers of description that characterized Solzhenitsyn's acclaimed memoir The Oak and the Calf. Between Two Millstones has appeared in Russian, French, German, Italian, and Romanian, but not in the country where Solzhenitsyn spent eighteen years of his western exile. It is one of the great memoirs of our time and a distinguished work of art in its own right. --Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College As a former political prisoner fresh out of the USSR, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was consumed with the desire of making the West see the dangers of communism. But an increasing number of Western commentators found his views too harsh in this respect, as well as 'insufficiently liberal' in general. Controversies concerning Solzhenitsyn began erupting with ever greater frequency, reaching a crescendo of sorts after the Harvard speech. In Between Two Millstones, Solzhenitsyn revisits these polemical battles with gusto and in fascinating detail. --Alexis Klimoff, emeritus, Vassar College

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn took to Vermont, and Vermonters took to him. I felt it a privilege to have met with him in his new Vermont setting, and I know that our state's forested beauty reminded him of home. We are proud that he believed that his homeland, and the world, could learn from the local self-government that is embodied in Town Meeting Day in towns and hamlets across the Green Mountain State. --Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) Like the man himself, the translated memoir of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is an indispensable part of history. Solzhenitsyn's words, now accessible to English readers for the first time, are a lasting testimony to his unbending moral courage, his persistence, and his persuasiveness--all of which helped bring down Communism. --Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense (1975-1977, 2001-2006) Between Two Millstones describes the years when Solzhenitsyn, banished but unbowed, defied Western decadence as eloquently as he had Soviet brutality. --Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard Solzhenitsyn's account of his early years of exile is informed by a refusal to be swept along by the swift-moving currents of modernity and an ever-increasing awareness of the West's loss of a moral compass. It should be high on the reading list of every thinking American. --Lee Congdon, author of Solzhenitsyn: The Historical-Spiritual Destinies of Russia and the West For those wishing to know more about the literary genius and political giant who was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, this autobiographical account of his years of exile in the West is a wish come true. Up until now, we have only had Solzhenitsyn's account of his years as a dissident in the Soviet Union, prior to his expulsion from his homeland. As for the years from 1974 to 1994, we have had to content ourselves with mere scraps and fragments. Now, at long last, we are being served the feast for which we have hungered. --Joseph Pearce, author of Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile As a former political prisoner fresh out of the USSR, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was consumed with the desire of making the West see the dangers of communism. But an increasing number of Western commentators found his views too harsh in this respect, as well as 'insufficiently liberal' in general. Controversies concerning Solzhenitsyn began erupting with ever greater frequency, reaching a crescendo of sorts after the Harvard speech. In Between Two Millstones, Solzhenitsyn revisits these polemical battles with gusto and in fascinating detail. --Alexis Klimoff, emeritus, Vassar College These 'sketches of life in exile' were written during the events described and are informed with the same energy and vivid powers of description that characterized Solzhenitsyn's acclaimed memoir The Oak and the Calf. Between Two Millstones has appeared in Russian, French, German, Italian, and Romanian, but not in the country where Solzhenitsyn spent eighteen years of his western exile. It is one of the great memoirs of our time and a distinguished work of art in its own right. --Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn took to Vermont, and Vermonters took to him. I felt it a privilege to have met with him in his new Vermont setting, and I know that our state's forested beauty reminded him of home. We are proud that he believed that his homeland, and the world, could learn from the local self-government that is embodied in Town Meeting Day in towns and hamlets across the Green Mountain State. --Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) Like the man himself, the translated memoir of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is an indispensable part of history. Solzhenitsyn's words, now accessible to English readers for the first time, are a lasting testimony to his unbending moral courage, his persistence, and his persuasiveness--all of which helped bring down Communism. --Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense (1975-1977, 2001-2006) Solzhenitsyn's account of his early years of exile is informed by a refusal to be swept along by the swift-moving currents of modernity and an ever-increasing awareness of the West's loss of a moral compass. It should be high on the reading list of every thinking American. --Lee Congdon, author of Solzhenitsyn: The Historical-Spiritual Destinies of Russia and the West For those wishing to know more about the literary genius and political giant who was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, this autobiographical account of his years of exile in the West is a wish come true. Up until now, we have only had Solzhenitsyn's account of his years as a dissident in the Soviet Union, prior to his expulsion from his homeland. As for the years from 1974 to 1994, we have had to content ourselves with mere scraps and fragments. Now, at long last, we are being served the feast for which we have hungered. --Joseph Pearce, author of Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile Between Two Millstones describes the years when Solzhenitsyn, banished but unbowed, defied Western decadence as eloquently as he had Soviet brutality. --The Weekly Standard These 'sketches of life in exile' were written during the events described and are informed with the same energy and vivid powers of description that characterized Solzhenitsyn's acclaimed memoir The Oak and the Calf. Between Two Millstones has appeared in Russian, French, German, Italian, and Romanian, but not in the country where Solzhenitsyn spent eighteen years of his western exile. It is one of the great memoirs of our time and a distinguished work of art in its own right. --Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College As a former political prisoner fresh out of the USSR, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was consumed with the desire of making the West see the dangers of communism. But an increasing number of Western commentators found his views too harsh in this respect, as well as 'insufficiently liberal' in general. Controversies concerning Solzhenitsyn began erupting with ever greater frequency, reaching a crescendo of sorts after the Harvard speech. In Between Two Millstones, Solzhenitsyn revisits these polemical battles with gusto and in fascinating detail. --Alexis Klimoff, emeritus, Vassar College

Author Information

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), Nobel Prize laureate in literature, was a Soviet political prisoner from 1945 to 1953. His story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) made him famous, and The Gulag Archipelago (1973) further unmasked Communism and played a critical role in its eventual defeat. Solzhenitsyn was exiled to the West in 1974. He ultimately published dozens of plays, poems, novels, and works of history, nonfiction, and memoir, including In the First Circle, Cancer Ward, The Red Wheel, The Oak and the Calf, and Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020). Peter Constantine is a literary translator and editor, and the director of the Literary Translation Program at the University of Connecticut. Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption College.

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