And Quiet Flows the Don
In the same year, Sholokhov began writing "And Quiet Flows the Don", which took him fourteen years to complete (1926–1940). It became the most-read work of Soviet fiction and was heralded as a powerful example of socialist realism, and it earned him both the 1941 State Stalin Prize and the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. It deals with the experiences of the Cossacks before and during World War I and the Russian Civil War.