Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was born on May 24, 1905, in the stanitsa of Vioshenskaya, Don River region, Russia. He participated in the Russian Civil War and World War II. His main work, 'And Quiet Flows the Don' (Тихий Дон, Tikhiy Don), was written over many years and became a landmark of Soviet and world literature, depicting the saga of a Cossack family amidst social and political conflicts. Other notable works include 'Virgin Soil Upturned' (Поднятая целина, Podnyataya tselina), which describes forced collectivization in rural areas, and the short story 'The Fate of a Man' (Судьба человека, Sudba cheloveka). Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965 "for his artistic and historical integrity with which, in his epic of the Don, he has expressed a new conception of and representation of the human condition in contemporary times". He died on February 21, 1984, in Vioshenskaya, Soviet Union (present-day Russia).