Books: Unofficial Russian Novelist

ONE LIFE, ONE KOPECK — Walter Duranty—Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

During his 17 years of assignments as Moscow correspondent of the New York Times small, blue-eyed, acute Walter Duranty (Write as I Please), an "effervescent little English expatriate with a faint air of skulldruggery about him," has acquired an impressive reputation not only as No. 1 U. S. foreign correspondent but also as the most official of unofficial U. S. ambassadors. Readers of his first novel, One Life, One Kopeck (titled after a Russian proverb meaning "Life is not worth a damn") may...