Solzhenitsyn full works to be released in Russia

MOSCOW, Nov 16 (Reuters) Russian publishers are releasing the first complete works of Soviet-era dissident writer and Nobel Prize laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn to come out in his native Russia.

His wife, Natalia, presented the first of the 30 volumes to reporters on Thursday. The full works are due to be published by 2010.

''I am happy ... that I've lived to this moment, to see the beginning of this publishing project,'' she said. ''Let's just hope he will live to see the project's end -- which he doesn't believe himself.'' The 87-year-old writer, who no longer appears in public, did not attend the presentation.

''His health is fragile and leaves much to be desired, which isn't surprising considering the life he's had,'' his wife said.

The writer, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, was imprisoned by Soviet authorities, surviving cancer, and then spent 20 years in exile in the United States before returning home in 1994.

His most famous work ''The Gulag Archipelago'' is a detailed account of the Soviet political prison camp network.

Solzhenitsyn's first complete works, in 20 volumes, was published in the West in the 1980s and early 1990s.

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