Books: Don Cossack

AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON—Mikhail Sholokhov—Knopf ($3).

What the late great Tolstoy's War and Peace did for old Russia, And Quiet Flows the Don attempts for new. Not nearly as long (755 pp.) as Tolstoy's epic. Author Sholokhov's novel is big enough to house comfortably over 50 principal characters. More typical of the traditional Russian novel than the Sovietized product, And Quiet Flows the Don hymns no paean to the Five Year Plan. Its ponderously simple narrative follows the fortunes of the Don Cossacks from peace to war to revolution, leaves them in the...