November 1916 (The Red Wheel II)

In August 1914 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn began his epic account of the events leading up to the Russian Revolution. Subtitled The Red Wheel/Knot I, the book was the first in a projected trilogy. It took more than 20 years for the second in the series to make its debut, but November 1916: The Red Wheel/Knot II picks up in the latter years of the war and chronicles the events between the end of October and the middle of November 1916. Though Solzhenitsyn himself admits that little of historical significance occurred during those few weeks, his novel is jam-packed with enough three-dimensional characters and tangled life stories to more than make up for the dearth of history. Cutting back and forth between the Russian frontlines, the fiercely divided Duma, an increasingly seditious peasantry, and various revolutionary groups, November 1916 masterfully re-creates the bubbling undercurrent of violence and cataclysmic change that would erupt in just a few short months. From Nicholas and Alexandra in St. Petersburg to Lenin in Switzerland, and a whole host of fictional characters in between, Solzhenitsyn brings the people, the problems, and the era to life. --Margaret Prior