["The Oak and the Calf"] is a story that should attract diverse readers. Professional students of the Soviet system will read it for what Solzhenitsyn saw inside the political and literary bureaucracies during his brief stay in official favor. Literary scholars will mine the memoirs for insights into Solzhenitsyn's artistic creativity. (They will conclude, I think, that his work belongs primarily to the genre of holocaust literature, a view disliked by more impassioned admirers who want to make even larger claims for him.) General readers may find parts of the story elusive, since it is embedded in Soviet political history, but they will be swept along by Solzhenitsyn's power as a narrative writer…. (p. 36)

Courage, inspired devotion to his cause, literary genius, intense religious faith and something akin to miraculous energy have made Solzhenitsyn, as his American publisher tells us, "a hero of our time." On one level...