“All I can remember about Solzhenitsyn is that he escaped to the west to escape the corruption in Russia only to then start slagging the west off, too.’
Yes, he did. Much to the visible annoyance of the Reagan administration. But he wasn’t entirely wrong, by any means.
Maybe he lost the plot a little bit towards the end but that doesn’t in any way detract from his achievements as a writer, which tower over what most other writers in his lifetime managed to produce. His Nobel Prize in 1970 was fully deserved.
“One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich” is the best introduction to his work, which is short enough to read in an afternoon.