When “Matryona’s House”, the first story in this superb collection by Russia’s leading writer, appeared in the Soviet Union in 1963, it was seen as an allegory of the stubborn persistence of inherent Russian values despite all vicissitudes. 

          Every story here bears the Mark of a master craftsman writing in the great classical tradition of Russian literature. The sixteen prose poems , products of a profound epigrammatic imagination, show an aspect of Solzhenitsyn’s unrivalled talent unfamiliar to readers in the West. This is a book that no one who has been moved by his great novels can afford to miss.