Sholokhov's novel has been available in English translation for many years, but it was usually chopped into two parts, Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea. Here it is given as one, while the translation by Robert Daglish has been revised and edited by Brian Murphy; the result is an outsize paperback of over 1,300 pages, including notes. The raw, epical, sweeping quality of Sholokhov's story of Don Cossacks caught up in the first World War, and later in the revolution which came out of it, has often been underlined, though I am unsure now if the novel is really the masterpiece it once seemed. It got him into trouble with the Soviet censorship because of its unflinching depiction of the war between Reds and Whites, so Sholokhov had to take his case personally to Stalin. He apparently became a reactionary in old age, attacking Pasternak and other dissidents and forfeiting the respect of a new, liberated generation of Russian writers.
B.F.