And Quiet Flows the Don

Mikhail Sholokhov's epic cycle chronicles the fate of the Don Cossacks through revolution, civil war, and the violent upheaval of their traditional way of life, earning him the Nobel Prize in 1965. The novel's vivid depictions of battle, community, and personal loyalty have been shadowed by persistent allegations of plagiarism, a controversy that has never been fully resolved.

Set against the Russian Civil War and the destruction of Cossack culture, And Quiet Flows the Don offers one of the most expansive fictional treatments of the revolutionary period in Russian literature. The authorship dispute, which suggests Sholokhov may have drawn heavily on the manuscripts of a Cossack writer who died in the conflict, remains one of the most contentious questions in twentieth-century literary scholarship.