SOURCE: “A Step on the Long Way,” in Christian Century, March 13, 1963, pp. 339-40.

In the following review, Brown commends the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which she regards as a positive step toward Soviet liberalization.

A brief novel based on the author’s own experience, this is a detailed account of the events of one day in the ten years’ imprisonment of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov in a Stalinist labor camp. It is a simple story, simply told. Ivan, typical of the many Russian citizens who were consigned to concentration camps for “crimes of treason” they had or had not committed, struggles to survive “one more day.” The day the reader shares with Ivan is an ordinary day. It is also a day of horror. No deliberate focusing of attention on acts of violence or brutality is attempted by the author, yet horror there...