Born in 1905, in a working Cossack family, Sholokhov's most impressionable years were those of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, which he had described with penetrating insight.

In 1926, he began his great epic of the Civil War And Quite Flows the Don, and, to use his own words,"found himself" as a writer "in that arduous and joyful creative work". And Quite Flows the Don was completed in 1940. The first book of Virgin Soil Upturned came out in 1932. The second was competed in 1960. In 1957 Sholokhov wrote a story, The Fate of a Man, which has become world famous. Also, he was working on They Fought for Their Country, a novel about Soviet people in the Second World War. Sholokhov is truly a writer of the people. His books have been printed in more than thirty-two million copies and translated into sixty-four languages.

Through the scene is set in a small Cossack village, Sholokhov's scope is no less great than in his other work, for the fate of his characters is the fate of a whole nation undergoing the greatest social revolution in its history.

A process of change had been set afoot that was to spread into every corner of Cossack life. Outworn traditions and habits were swept aside, personalities and ideas that had taken generations to form were either broken or made anew and all this in the face of bitter opposition from those who could not or would not change.

With a telling humanity Sholokhov depicts the faults and strivings, the suffering and laughter both of the fighters for progress with whom he himself has such deep ties, and their opponents.

This book has a fundamental message for those who wish to understand the stresses and strains of Soviet life from the 1930's to the present day.