On Sunday, August 3rd, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist and the definitive chronicler of the horrors of Gulag, passed away.

Having evaded death at the front during World War II, in numerous work camps, and from an undiagnosed cancer, his was a life of remarkable endurance - truly, the great works for which he will be remembered ought not to exist. Narrowly escaping suppression and censorship at almost every turn, his great novels are an act of witness, illuminating an unconscionable bureaucracy with unshakeable humanity.

One of my favourite stories is "An Incident at Krechetovka Station", in which reverberates Turgenev, Tolstoi - a tradition savagely interrupted by the horrors of Stalin but strangely intact in his best short story writing. Then there is Cancer Ward - scalding and necessary reading, and The Gulag Archipelago, a masterwork that will reassert itself in perpetuity as a heroic indictment of tyranny, and as sadly relevant to human rights abuses today.

Christopher Hitchens has taken up the more complicated aspects of the man in a short, precise article at Slate, but now seems more the time to toast his indomitable spirit of survival and the brilliant, sweeping testimony that remains.