Ilya Ehrenburg was born in 1891 into the family of a Moscow manufacturer. At the age of fifteen he joined the revolutionary movement. He was expelled from the gymnasium for distributing Bolshevik leaflets, was arrested and served more than a year in prison. From 1909 to 1917 he was a resident of Paris and did much traveling throughout Europe. It was at this time that he took to writing poetry, which he printed in Russia and other countries. In 1917 he returned to his native country. In 1921 he again left for France, and lived in Paris, making frequent trips to the Soviet Union. Ehrenburg's writings show great diversity of theme and genre. Whether the work at hand was a purely literary article or a novel of fantastic cast, a story of adventure or a delicately penned novelette, a book of verse or a political pamphlet, whether he was dispensing humor or the comments of a journalist, he wielded pen with equal mastery and brilliance. The Storm was the Stalin Prize Novel for 1947.
Author
Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (Russian: Илья Григорьевич Эренбург) was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure. Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist - in particular, as a reporter in three wars (First World War, Spanish Civil War and the Second World War). His articles on the Second World War have provoked intense controversies in West Germany, especially during the sixties. The novel The Thaw (Оттепель) gave its name to an entire era of Soviet cultural politics, namely, the liberalization after the death of Joseph Stalin. Ehrenburg's travel writing also had great resonance, as did to an arguably greater extent his autobiography People, Years, Life, which may be his best known and most discussed work. The Black Book, edited by him and Vassily Grossman, has special historical significance; detailing the genocide on Soviet citizens of Jewish ancestry, it is the first great documentary work on the Holocaust. In addition, Ehrenburg wrote a succession of works of poetry.
