In this uneven but fascinating collection of eight stories written after the late Nobel Prize winning author's 1994 return to Russia, seven are structured "binarily," describing Russians from all walks of life both before and after the Soviet upheavals of war, revolution, and reform. This conceit includes enough variation to avoid becoming too schematic, though several of the longer war narratives will mesmerize or fatigue, depending on the reader's willingness to accept form as content—their lumbering progress and myopic point of view closely mirrors a grunt's progress from trench to trench. In "Adlig Schwenkitten: A Tale of Twenty-Four Hours" the commander of a sound-ranging unit charged with locating enemy troops (as Solzhenitsyn himself was) is as frustrated by his inability to find Nazis as he is dismayed by the whereabouts of the Soviet battalions for whom he is scouting. More crisply told is the title story, in which a prisoner sends a desperate letter to a famous writer, pleading for food and recalling an apricot tree from his peasant childhood; upon receiving the letter, the writer envies the prisoner's naive writing style. After surviving imprisonment, censor, and deportation, Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago) more than earns his moments of irony, though a sense of resignation permeates these pages. (Sept.)