November 1916

James Bowman

November 1916, a very Russian book, reminds us that the searching exploration of the particular provides the best access to universal truth. It shows us, quite palpably, that the destinies of Russia and the West inexorably intertwine.
—New Criterion

John Bayley

The hero...is very much Solzhenitsyn...as he is capable of seeing himself with a dispassionate objectivity....lacking in simple human curiosity about other people....The superabundance of detail...reminds the...reader at every turn of the non-inevitability of events that we nonetheless know are bound to come...Conveys a sense of the past...as a teeming womb of incalculability and possibility.
— The New York Times Book Review

Richard Bernstein

.An impressive accomplishment....The work is an enormous literary palace teeming with life and intellectual passion, a grand edifice of history and character in the Tolstoy tradition....a fable centering on human intractability that promises to stand the test of time.
— The New York Times

Library Journal

Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn is perhaps best known for his works that expose the inhumane conditions of life under the Soviet regime. However, his magnum opus, collectively entitled "The Red Wheel," is a multi-volume chronicle of events leading to the Russian Revolution. The first volume, August 1914, depicted the outbreak of World War I and the Russian offensive. November 1916 portrays Russia on the brink of revolution. Each volume contains characters both fictional and historical, ranging from a peasant soldier to the emperor himself, who appear throughout the work in polyphonic style. Their personal crises are subsumed by the greater dilemma facing the country. Solzhenitsyn is less concerned with plot and action than with ideas, and pre-revolutionary politics take center stage. The translation is serviceable but occasionally resorts to cliches that seem out of place. All in all, this long, demanding work will be best appreciated by readers with an enthusiasm for Russian history and politics. -- Sister M. Anna Falbo, Villa Maria College Library, Buffalo, NY

Booknews

The second in the Russian Nobel Laureate's four-volume series The Red Wheel, a Tolstoy-inspired and Tolstoy-sized novel of the months just before the Revolution. He portrays Petrograd luxury stores with windows brightly lit despite World War I; Duma debates about the monarchy, the course of the war, and the clashing paths to reform; and the increasing radicalization of workers in the munitions factories. He appends identifications of characters. Translated from Krasnoe koleso. Uzel II: Oktyabr shestnadtsatogo published by Voyennoye izdatelstvo, Moscow, in 1990. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.