Sigh…another book I want…and just pre-ordered…

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s ‘last stories’ will appear in English at last

A collection of nine short stories by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, described by scholars as ranking alongside his best work, is to be published in English for the first time. In one of the publishing events of the autumn, the collection will appear under the title Apricot Jam and Other Stories, fulfilling a long-held desire of the author that the work be available to the English-speaking world.

The collection reveals that Solzhenitsyn was still experimenting with literary form towards the end of his life. Eight of the stories have two parts, which are conceived as pairs. Daniel J. Mahoney, a Solzhenitsyn scholar, said: “This was a new form that Solzhenitsyn, always a pioneer of new genres… called binary tales. They’re two-part stories that are connected by a theme, even though there’s a sharp contrast. They [each] range from 20 to 50 typed pages. Many of them highlight the moral dilemmas and choices of people under a totalitarian regime. A few deal with the dilemmas of post-communist Russia.”

Update (4 Aug 2011): One of the short stories in this collection, The New (Upcoming) Generation, can be found here.