Solzhenitsyn, still at it

Russia’s greatest living novelist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is working feverishly to complete his collected works and is writing every day despite failing health, a missing vertebra and being unable to walk, his wife, Natalia, revealed yesterday.

In a rare interview, Natalia Solzhenitsyn told The Observer that her Nobel prize-winning husband – who turns 90 in December – is still working on several major literary projects in his west Moscow dacha, and is determined to oversee the publication of a 30-volume edition of his selected works.