New work from late Russian dissident

Fans and enemies of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who has just died, will not have to wait long for a new literary treasure from the dissident. American publishers have revealed that they are on the verge of bringing out the first unexpurgated edition in English of one of his great gulag masterpieces, The First Circle.

Though the novel was published to widespread acclaim in the West in 1968, it was a heavily censored version. At 580 pages, it was missing a full nine chapters.

The author completed the novel in 1964. Centred around a labour camp in which scientists and scholars had been sent for alleged subversion against the regime, it was banned by the Soviets despite the heavy cuts he made. At one point the text was seized by the KGB. The shortened text was leaked to the West and published despite objections by Solzhenitsyn, who believed his work was being exploited for profit, and by scholars who feared that the release could threaten his safety.

The full edition has long been available in Russian and it was a death, rather than continued persecution of the Nobel prize winner, that held up the English version.

Peter Hubbard, an editor at Harper Perennial which will publish the book next year says that Solzhenitsyn approved the new English text several years ago and commissioned his favorite translator, Harry T Willetts. But Willetts died in 2005, not long after completing the task and the publisher "went through some edits with Solzhenitsyn", Hubbard tells Associated Press. "It took a little time for the book to make its way to us."