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Writer and prophet.

Article Excerpt
The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings 1947-2005, edited by Edward E. Ericson Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney (ISI, 650 pp., $30)

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THIS thoughtfully edited volume succeeds in reflecting the richness of Solzhenitsyn's writings; it offers an excellent sampling of both his fiction and his nonfiction, as well as an informative introductory essay and short introductions for each selection. It goes a long way to make the prolific author accessible to readers unable or unwilling to read his entire output, and helps us assess his place in 20th-century literature and social-political debates.

Three of his major novels are represented by substantial extracts: The Red Wheel with 155 pages, Cancer Ward with 62, and The First Circle with 47. Close to 100 pages of The Gulag Archipelago are reprinted as well as 100 pages of essays and addresses plus short stories, poems, "miniatures," and other nonfiction. Regrettably there is no bibliography, not even of his writings published in English.

Solzhenitsyn's major claim to fame has been the large and unique role he played in acquainting the world with the nature and worst manifestations of Soviet totalitarianism and thereby making a major contribution to its moral discrediting. Two of his early books accomplished this: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (first published in English in 1963) and more comprehensively The Gulag Archipelago (first published in...