Dissenting literary giant Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89

One of the great dissenters of the Soviet regime, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, passed away Sunday evening. At 89 the author died of heart failure, his son reported. Solzhenitsyn came of age during Stalin's Russia working as a science teacher in a Rural town. His first novel "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" propelled him into the literary world, and eventually winning the Nobel Prize in 1970. His novels sold over 300 million copies worldwide, and that isn't really his great achievement. He was an author of a type that is rarely seen right now (at least in the west), someone who stood up against an entire school of thought and was cast away for it, but managed to outlive the system by nearly two decades. Check out the article in the New York TImes if you're interested in learning a little more about his life and work, this is a blog, so that's all you get.