November 1916: A Novel - (FSG Classics) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"A superb blend of fact and fiction written in a racy, original style." --John Keep, The Times Literary Supplement

"Solzhenitsyn's tremendous gifts as a novelist shine in his creation of characters and his depiction of war on the front line." --The New Yorker

"Solzhenitsyn achives something exceedingly rare among novelists dealing with history . . . He gets a sense of the past not as something to be understood in the light of the present, but as a teeming womb of incalculablility and possibility." --John Bayley, The New York Book Review

About the Author

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, historian, and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature. He served as a decorated commander in the Red Army during World War II before he was arrested for anti-Soviet propaganda and sentenced to eight years in a labor camp, where he drew inspiration for his controversial novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Exiled in 1974, he returned to Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and died in Moscow in 2008.