This episode's recommended books are:

1. The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, edited by Edward E. Ericson Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney
2. The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Criticism (Abridged) (Vintage Edition) (Complete 3 Volume Edition) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3. In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
4. Apricot Jam and Other Stories by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
5. Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974–1978 and Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978-1994 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Five Books for Catholics may receive a commission from qualifying purchases made using the affiliate links to the books listed.

The Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) is the author of modern classics such as The Gulag Archipelago, In The First Circle, and Cancer Ward. Born and raised in wake of the Bolshevik Revoution, he served as an artillery officer in the Red Army during World War II. In 1945, he was arrested by Russian counterintelligence while on active duty in East Prussia. He had committed the crime of criticising Stalin in private letters to a childhood friend. He served eight years in various prisons, two in exile, and almost died from an undiagnosed cancer. During those ten years, he came to understand Communism’s inherently dehumanizing nature, found much of the materials around which he would build his future novels, and regained his faith as a Russian Orthodox Christian. In 1962, he was allowed to publish his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. However, after Khrushchev’s deposition in 1964, the Soviet authorities put a stop to the publication of his other writings and, in February 1974, expelled him after The Gulag Archipelago was published in Russian in Paris on December 28, 1973. Once in the West, he could finally receive the Nobel Prize for Literature he had been awarded four years earlier. Initially, lionised in the West, he soon fell out of favour in some quarters. It became apparent that his opposition to communism and the Soviet Regime did not make him, as many had wrongly supposed, a secular liberal and progressive. While he appreciated the valid aspects of Western political culture, such as the rule of law and local self-government, he criticised the rise of secular humanism. In 1994, he returned to Russia, where he died in 2008.

In this interview, Daniel J. Mahoney will explain the significance of Solzhenitsyn by taking us through his pick of five of the author’s books.

Daniel J. Mahoney is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, professor emeritus of Assumption University. His recent books include The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation (Encounter Books), and Recovering Politics, Civilization, and the Soul: Essays on Pierre Manent and Roger Scruton (St. Augustine’s Press), and The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity. Regarding this interview, he has written Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology (2001) and The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth about a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker (2020). With Edward E. Ericson Jr. he is the editor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005.

Read the interview at ⁠www.fivebooksforcatholics.com/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/

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