She attended the University of Petrograd from 1918 to 1924 and graduated with highest honors in history.
Rand read widely and avidly in her early years, and several key events between childhood and college influenced her writing. A child who knew by the age of eight that she wanted to be a writer, she was most influenced by the writings of Maurice Champagne, Victor Hugo, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Rand read Champagne's adventure story, "The Mystical Valley," in a French magazine in 1914; for her, its protagonist, Cyrus, a totally self-confident man of action, intelligence, and courage, became an ideal of manhood. In fact, Cyrus became the basis for all the fictional heroes and heroines she later created.
She gained a sense of what a novel should be from Hugo-the creation of heroic, larger-than-life characters; complex and ingenious plots unfolding on a grand and unexpected scale that still managed to incorporate themes, ideas, and action. Although Rand disagreed with much of what Nietzsche believed, she viewed him as a spiritual ally who had a similar view of man that emphasized the heroic, defended individualism, and despised altruism.
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