He bought a typewriter with roman letters and started writing in English. Less Than One . In 1987 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. From 1981 until his death in 1996 he spent each spring teaching at Mount Holyoke College. The eighteenth-century home in South Hadley with its rough maple floors reminded him of the room and a half in Leningrad and his mother's admonition not to walk barefoot on the wooden floors.
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