“And then Stalin died, a fate that even dictators cannot escape. At last Anatoly believed that the book he had worked on for so many years could be published, and the world would discover the truth. But the truth was not what the Soviet authorities wanted the world to discover, so even before Uncle Joe reached the bookshops, every single copy was destroyed. Even the press on which it had been printed was smashed to pieces. A show trial followed, when the author was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor and transported to the depths of Siberia to ensure that never again could he cause the regime any embarrassment. Thank God that Samuel Beckett, John Steinbeck, Hermann Hesse and Rabindranath Tagore, all winners of the Nobel Prize for literature, weren’t born in the Soviet Union, or we might never have been able to read their masterpieces.

“How appropriate that the Swedish Academy has chosen Anatoly Babakov to be the recipient of this year’s award. Because its founder, Alfred Nobel,” Harry paused for a moment to acknowledge the garlanded statue of Nobel that rested on a plinth behind him, “wrote in his will that this prize should not be awarded for literary excellence alone, but for work that ‘embodies an ideal.’ One wonders if there can ever have been a more appropriate recipient of this award.

“And so we come together this evening to honor a remarkable man, whose death will not diminish his life’s achievement, but will only help to ensure that it will endure. Anatoly Babakov possessed a gift that we lesser mortals can only aspire to. An author whose heroism will surely survive the whirligig of time, and who now joins his immortal fellow countrymen Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn as their equal.”

Harry paused, looked up at the audience, and waited for that moment before he knew the spell would be broken. And then, almost in a whisper, he said, “It takes a heroic figure to rewrite history so that future generations might know the truth and benefit from his sacrifice. Quite simply, Anatoly Babakov fulfilled the ancient prophecy: cometh the hour, cometh the man.”

The whole audience rose as one, assuming that the speech had ended. Although Harry continued to grip the sides of the lectern, it was some time before they realized he had more to say. One by one they resumed their seats, until the acclamation of the throng had been replaced by an expectant silence. Only then did Harry take a fountain pen from an inside pocket, unscrew the cap and hold the pen high in the air. “Anatoly Yuryevich Babakov, you have proved to every dictator who ever ruled without the people’s mandate that the pen is mightier than the sword.”