and two sons. Sholokhov's first book was Tales from the Don, a collection of stories largely based on his personal experiences in his native region during World War I and the Russian Civil War; it was published in 1926. The story "Nakhalyonok", partly based on his own childhood, was later made into a popular film. 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 historical fiction, and it earned him the 1941 State Stalin Prize. It deals with the experiences of the Cossacks before and during World War I and the Russian Civil War. Another novel, Virgin Soil Upturned, which earned a Lenin Prize, took 28 years to complete. It is composed of two parts, Seeds of Tomorrow (1932) and Harvest on the Don (1960), and reflects life during collectivization in the Don area. It was heralded as a powerful example of socialist realism. The short story "The Fate of a Man" (1957) was made into a popular Russian film. During World War II, Sholokhov wrote about the Soviet war effort for various journals. He also covered the devastation caused by Wehrmacht troops along the Don. His mother was killed when Veshenskaya was bombed in 1942. Sholokhov's unfinished novel They Fought for Their Country is about World War II (known in the Soviet Union, and now in Russia, as the Great Patriotic War). Sholokhov's collected works were published in eight volumes between 1956 and 1960, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965. Authorship of texts First rumors of Sholokhov's supposed plagiarism appeared in 1928 following the success of the first two volumes of And Quiet Flows the Don: it was speculated that the author stole the manuscript from a dead White Army officer. Sholokhov asked the Pravda newspaper to prove his authorship, submitted his manuscripts of the first three volumes of And Quiet Flows the Don and the plan of the fourth one. In 1929 a special commission was formed that accepted Sholokhov's authorship. In the conclusion signed by four experts, the commission stated that there was no evidence of plagiarism on the one hand, and on the other hand the manuscripts' style was close to that of Sholokhov's previous book, Tales from the Don. The allegations resurfaced in the 1960s with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as a notable proponent,