August 1914 (novel)
August 1914 (Russian: Август четырнадцатого) is a Russian novel by Nobel Prize-winning writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the defeat of the Imperial Russian Army at the Battle of Tannenberg in East Prussia. The novel was completed in 1970, although there is a foreword from the author saying that it is not complete, rather a "first part, or facsile, of a work in many parts;" first published in 1971, with an English translation the following year. The novel is an unusual blend of fiction narrative and historiography, and has given rise to extensive and often bitter controversy, both from the literary as well as from the historical point of view. The book also contains several interludes noted as "screen" written as set direction for a film.
The cover of the first English edition published by The Bodley Head in 1972 | |
Author | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn |
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Original title | Август 1914 |
Translator | Michael Glenny |
Country | Soviet Union |
Language | Russian |
Series | The Red Wheel |
Genre | Historical novel |
Publisher | YMCA Press |
Publication date | 1971; 1984 |
Media type | Print (Hardback) |
Pages | 573 pp; 850+ pp (Second version) |
Followed by | November 1916 |
Some episodes of the book had caused in accusations of the author of anti-Semitism, mostly rebutted at the time, but these were renewed later, regarding Two Hundred Years Together.