Quiet Flows the Don

Quiet Flows the Don, a monument to the Don Cossacks, depicts the socio-political battle of the Don Cossack families and villages during the Russian Civil War. Written in the tradition of the great Russian novels of the nineteenth century, it is also a unique and intensely personal statement of a crucial episode in Russia's Civil War. Rich in language, vividly portraying Cossack families and lovingly evoking the river landscape and the steppes, it holds its place as the leading novel in seventy years of Soviet literature.

This translation uses the early editions of Quiet Flows the Don which conform most closely to the author's original writings. Sholokhov had to conduct a long battle against censorship and the quarrel was referred to Stalin before the second half of the novel could eventually be published.