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The Triumph of a Sausage. The plot of the novel is simply how many prison rules Shukhov will get away with breaking in a single day. After eight years in the camp, he has an animal cunning for finding food and avoiding punishment. He knows when to press forward, when to hang back, whom to be near, whom to avoid. In a complex series of maneuvers, any one of which could land him in the cell, he wangles an extra bowl of soup, some tobacco, and—his triumph—a slice of sausage, which he exultantly swallows in bed: "the brief moment for which a prisoner lives." In a gruesome way, the novel has a happy ending, for Shukhov goes to sleep quite pleased with his day's adventures.
One Day is less a literary than a political phenomenon. It lacks the intense psychological probing of the great prison accounts of a Dostoevsky or an Ivo Andric. Even its political significance, which is considerable, should not be exaggerated. Stalin may be fair game for critics in Russia, but the Communist Party and ideology are still off limits. Another novelist, Victor Nekrasov, was recently reprimanded by Izvestia (TIME, Feb. 1) for his comments on traveling in the U.S. He made the mistake, scolded Izvestia, of "painting a fifty-fifty picture of American life," and even "applying his fifty-fifty rule to a comparison of America and Russia."