We would be greatly remiss not to note the passing of one of the towering figures of the 20th Century, both in literature and in the wider arena of culture: Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Solzhenitsyn turned unbelievable suffering into vital art, and through that art helped to bring an end to a mighty evil in the world. Exiled to America, he found this country a deep disappointment. When he addressed students at Harvard on the subject of good and evil, he was booed. Yet he persevered, and triumphed. He was a Christian, of the Orthodox faith.
He wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.