Cancer Ward - a largely autobiographical account of a group of people who pass through the cancer wing of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death - was hailed by Time as 'a literary event of the first magnitude' when it first appeared in 1966.

"Cancer Ward" examines the relationship of a group of people in the cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin''s death. We see them under normal circumstances, and also reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. Together they represent a remarkable cross-section of contemporary Russian characters and attitudes. The experiences of the central character, Oleg Kostoglotov, closely reflect the author''s own: Solzhenitsyn himself became a patient in a cancer ward in the mid-1950s, on his release from a labor camp, and later recovered. Translated by Nicholas Bethell and David Burg.

Cancer Ward - a largely autobiographical account of a group of people who pass through the cancer wing of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin''s death - was hailed by Time as ''a literary event of the first magnitude'' when it first appeared in 1966.

Author and historian Aleksandr Isayevick Solzhenitsyn, considered by many to be the preeminent Russian writer of the second half of the 20th century, was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk in the northern Caucusus Mountains. He attended the University of Rostov-na-Donu and took correspondence courses at Moscow State University. Solzhenitsyn served in the Russian army during World War II but was arrested in 1945 for writing a letter criticizing Stalin. He spent the next decade in prisons and labor camps and, later, exile, before being allowed to return to central Russia, where he taught and wrote. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for LiteratureIn 1974, he was arrested for treason and exiled following the publication of The Gulag Archipelago. He moved to Switzerland and later the U. S. where he continued to write fiction and history. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he returned to his homeland.