In time for the centenary of the beginning of the Russian Revolution, a new edition of the Russian Nobelist's major work
The month of November 1916 in Russia was outwardly quiet--the proverbial calm before the storm--but beneath the placid surface, society seethed fiercely.
In Petrograd, as St. Petersburg was then known, luxury-store windows are still brightly lit; the Duma debates the monarchy, the course of war, and clashing paths to reform; the workers in the miserable munitions factories veer toward sedition.
At the front, all is stalemate, while in the countryside sullen anxiety among hard-pressed farmers is rapidly replacing patriotism.
In Zurich, Lenin, with the smallest of all revolutionary groups, plots his sinister logistical miracle.
With masterly and moving empathy, through the eyes of both historical and fictional protagonists, Solzhenitsyn unforgettably transports us to that time and place--the last of pre-Soviet Russia. "
November 1916" is the second volume in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's multipart work, "The Red Wheel." This volume concentrates on a historical turning point, or "knot," as the wheel rolls inexorably toward revolution.

Introduction by John Bayley

The Russian Nobelist's major work, back in print for the centenary of World War I and the Russian Revolution

In his monumental narrative of the outbreak of the First World War and the ill-fated Russian offensive into East Prussia, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has written "a dramatically new interpretation of Russian history" (Nina Krushcheva, "The Nation").
The assassination of the tsarist prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, a crucial event in the years leading up to the Revolution of 1917, is reconstructed from the alienating viewpoints of historical witnesses. The sole voice of reason among the advisers to Tsar Nikolai II, Stolypin died at the hands of the anarchist Mordko Bogrov, and with him Russia's last hope for reform perished.
" August 1914" is the first volume of Solzhenitsyn's epic, "The Red Wheel"; the second is "November 1916." Each volume concentrates on a critical moment or "knot" in the history of the Russian Revolution.

For the centenary of the Russian Revolution, a new edition of the Russian Nobelist's most accessible novel

"
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is an undisputed classic of contemporary literature. First published (in censored form) in the Soviet journal "Novy Mir" in 1962, it is the story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov as he struggles to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. On every page of this graphic depiction of Ivan Denisovich's struggles, the pain of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's own decade-long experience in the gulag is apparent--which makes its ultimate tribute to one man's will to triumph over relentless dehumanization all the more moving.
An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced-work camps, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is one of the most extraordinary literary works to have emerged from the Soviet Union. The first of Solzhenitsyn's novels to be published, it forced both the Soviet Union and the West to confront the Soviet's human rights record, and the novel was specifically mentioned in the presentation speech when Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. Above all, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" establishes Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy" (Harrison Salisbury, "The ""New York Times").
This unexpurgated, widely acclaimed translation by H. T. Willetts is the only translation authorized by Solzhenitsyn himself.

The Russian writer Isaac Babel (1894-1940) is widely acknowledged to be one of the great masters of twentieth-century literature, hailed as a genius by such critics as Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe. The work for which he is best known is a cycle of stories called Red Cavalry, which depicts the exploits of the Cossack cavalry during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920 and is based on Babel's experiences as he rode with the Cossacks during the campaign. Throughout this period Babel kept a diary, in which he recorded the devastation of the war, the extreme cruelty of the Polish and Red armies alike toward the Jewish population in Ukraine and eastern Poland, and his own conflicted role as both Soviet revolutionary and Jew. The 1920 Diary, a vital source for Red Cavalry as well as a compelling narrative, is now published in English for the first time. The 1920 Diary is the most significant contemporary account of the tragedy of Eastern European Jewry during this period. The Diary also yields important insights into Babel's personal evolution, showing his youthful curiosity and his anguish as, frequently concealing his own Jewish identity, he mingled with the victimized Jews of the region's shtetls and with his Cossack comrades. Finally, the Diary sheds light on Babel's artistic development, revealing the path from observations recorded in excitement and despair to the painstakingly crafted narratives of the Red Cavalry cycle.