"Sleepless Days" evokes the daily grind of an authoritarian society: the psychic drabness of it all, the draining political rituals, the disenchantments. Compact and sturdy, it is a beautifully made fiction. Yet the realism of its portraiture and the composure of its form are sharply complicated by a tone of hovering anxiety, as if somewhere in the background lurked the ghost of Kafka. (p. 7)

It would be interesting to know whether Mr. Becker began this novel with a clearly worked-out idea or came to the idea only through the process of writing it…. Mr. Becker may … have made art into an avenue to knowledge, finding out what he is "like at the moment." In any case, his book tells us what it is like to live in the airless world of authoritarianism, the costs of obedience, the possibilities of resistance. (p. 46)

Irving Howe, "The Cost of Obedience," in...