Potok, well known for his novels of Jewish family life such as The Chosen, turns to nonfiction in The Gates of November, a wrenching family chronicle with a riveting historical undercurrent. The story of the family patriarch, Solomon Slepak, spans most of the book: ignoring his mother's wish that he become a rabbi, Slepak emigrated at 13 to America, became a Marxist in New York, returned to fight in the Russian Revolution, and rose to prominence within the Communist Party. But while Solomon remained a convinced Bolshevik, his son Volodya rejected socialism when anti-Semitism emerged during Stalin's era. Disowned by his father, Volodya was later exiled to Siberia as a dissident. The story of the Slepaks is simultaneously the story of Soviet Jewry and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.


From Publishers Weekly
Novelist Potok (The Chosen) presents here the history of a family of Soviet Jews centered on the relationship of father and son. Solomon Slepak was an old-guard Bolshevik who never lost his faith in the party?and survived the Stalinist purges miraculously and mysteriously (Stalin exterminated almost all old party members). His son, Volodya, grew up believing in the party but, as he married and started raising a family, came to question the Communist system and eventually became a refusenik, a dissident who protested openly against the regime. The author met Volodya and his wife, Masha, in 1985 while on a trip to Moscow. This compelling account, which is also a chronicle of the Soviet dissident movement, highlights the heroism, and sacrifice, of those who stand up to the power of a totalitarian state. (Nov.) FYI: The title comes from a line of poetry by Aleksandr Pushkin.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Potok, the celebrated author of best-selling novels of Jewish life (e.g., The Chosen), here turns to biography to tell of two generations, father and son, in a Russian Jewish family. Against the backdrop of 19th-century Russian prejudice, the author portrays the life of the father, Solomon, who casts his lot as revolutionary, Bolshevik, and Soviet?and never looks back as the regime returns to its anti-Semitic past. Meanwhile, his son, Volodya, raised as an assimilated Jew in Soviet society, finds his own role as rebel, becoming a Zionist and leading dissident when faced with Soviet discrimination. Potok, a family friend, had access to their records to explore the rift between the generations and the broader question of the nature of the loyal citizen who turns revolutionary. His well-written, thought-provoking book will find an audience among generalists and historians.-?Rena Fowler, Humboldt State Univ., Arcata, Cal.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Felicity Barringer
... a family tale, a tale that is enmeshed in Soviet history and that is part of Jewish history ... the heroism [of the Slepaks] as people and as Jews cannot help being moving.


From Booklist
The experiences of Solomon and Volodya Slepak, a father and son whose lives span the twentieth century, are the basis for Potok's exploration of the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union. Solomon Slepak, born in 1893 in a small Russian town, rose high in the Communist bureaucracy, serving in the military, the diplomatic corps, and as a propagandist for Tass. Mysteriously surviving the attempts under Stalin to rid the Communist ruling class of Jews and maintaining his unswerving faith in Bolshevism, Solomon broke with his son when Bolodya decided to emigrate from Russia to Israel. Over the 18 years it took for the Volodya and his wife to get permission to leave Russia, they lost their jobs, were forced to divorce, were placed under arrest and sent into internal exile, and were continually harassed by the authorities. There is a great deal of interesting history here, but with Potok's plodding writing style, the account lacks the emotional punch of first-person refusenik chronicles. Nancy Pearl


From Kirkus Reviews
Potok, whose novels of families at odds with themselves ring so true (I Am the Clay, 1992, etc.), turns his attention to a deeply divided real-life family of Russian Jews. Volodya Slepak's name will be familiar to anyone who was active in the movement to free Soviet Jews in the 1970s and '80s. He and his wife, Masha, were two of the most steadfast of the ``refuseniks,'' Jewish activists who were denied exit visas to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union. What is less familiar about Slepak is his family's unusual history. His father, Solomon, was a high-ranking functionary in the Bolshevik movement who weathered the purges and bloodshed of the Stalin era. Virtually until his death in his late 70s, Solomon continued to uphold the party and the Kremlin, disdaining his son's political activities. Potok, who first encountered Volodya when he himself was active in the movement for Soviet Jewry, has had access to many hours of taped interviews with Volodya, Masha, their two sons, and other family members and friends, and he has used them to reconstruct the story of a bitterly estranged father and son, and the ideological civil war that split them apart. Regrettably, because so much of the history of Solomon's life is missing--the KGB wouldn't release his files, much of his early story can only be garnered by reconstruction and guesswork--the first half of the book is sketchy and unsatisfying. When Potok begins to trace Volodya's history, his novelist's eye and ear help bring the tale to life. But the end of the story is a somber one, with both Volodya and the author given to pessimistic ruminations on the future of their respective homelands. While not on a par with his best fiction, this Potok offering will engage many readers, particularly those with vivid memories of the struggles of, and for, Soviet Jews. (13 photographs, not seen) (First printing of 30,000) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Midwest Book Review
This is both a work of nonfiction - Potok's departure from his fictional Jewish worlds - and a literary achievement and is thus reviewed here for its potential value in both genres. Potok chronicles the Slepak family, whose changing beliefs and lives mirror their Russian homeland's transitions. The family sketch lends insights into both home and homeland in Potok's fine account.


Book Description
"REMARKABLE . . . A WONDERFUL STORY."
--The Boston Globe

The father is a high-ranking Communist officer, a Jew who survived Stalin's purges. The son is a "refusenik," who risked his life and happiness to protest everything his father held dear. Now, Chaim Potok, beloved author of the award-winning novels The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev, unfolds the gripping true story of a father, a son, and a conflict that spans Soviet history. Drawing on taped interviews and his harrowing visits to Russia, Potok traces the public and privates lives of the Slepak family: Their passions and ideologies, their struggles to reconcile their identities as Russians and as Jews, their willingness to fight--and die--for diametrically opposed political beliefs.

"[A] vivid account . . . [Potok] brings a novelist's passion and eye for detail to a gripping story that possesses many of the elements of fiction--except that it's all too true."
--San Francisco Chronicle


From the Publisher
It was my sincere priviledge to work on the hardcover edition of this book. Chaim Potok is an amazingly gifted man, not just his writing, which is extraordinary, but in how he approaches being human. The story of a father and son divided by a faith that would not be supressed, not even in Communist Russia, is heart-breaking. A must read.
A. Scheibe, editorial


From the Inside Flap
"REMARKABLE . . . A WONDERFUL STORY."
--The Boston Globe

The father is a high-ranking Communist officer, a Jew who survived Stalin's purges. The son is a "refusenik," who risked his life and happiness to protest everything his father held dear. Now, Chaim Potok, beloved author of the award-winning novels The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev, unfolds the gripping true story of a father, a son, and a conflict that spans Soviet history. Drawing on taped interviews and his harrowing visits to Russia, Potok traces the public and privates lives of the Slepak family: Their passions and ideologies, their struggles to reconcile their identities as Russians and as Jews, their willingness to fight--and die--for diametrically opposed political beliefs.

"[A] vivid account . . . [Potok] brings a novelist's passion and eye for detail to a gripping story that possesses many of the elements of fiction--except that it's all too true."
--San Francisco Chronicle

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the author of The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev comes an epic work of nonfiction chronicling the stormy lives of a Jewish father and son whose stories span the entire history of the Soviet Union. Solomon Slepak, an inflexible old-guard Bolshevik - military commander, diplomat, propagandist - not only miraculously survived the murderous purges of the thirties and late forties, despite his high visibility and his Jewish origins, but retained to the last his unwavering faith in the Communist Party. His son, Volodya, was raised as a true believer and easily entered the elite Moscow world of scientists and engineers - until, choosing the path of dissent, he became an internationally renowned "refusenik" hero. For eighteen years he and his wife, Masha, were the objects of government persecution for the "crime" of attempting to leave the Soviet Union - five of those years lost in Siberia as punishment for hanging a banner from the balcony of their Moscow apartment which read "Let us go to our son in Israel." The circumstances that shaped Solomon and Volodya Slepak - their personal and public histories and the clash of their ideologies - form the substance of this remarkable account of a family and a nation. Chaim Potok, who first met the younger Slepaks when they were still under siege in Moscow, tells their story with deep understanding and empathy.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Novelist Potok (The Chosen) presents here the history of a family of Soviet Jews centered on the relationship of father and son. Solomon Slepak was an old-guard Bolshevik who never lost his faith in the party-and survived the Stalinist purges miraculously and mysteriously (Stalin exterminated almost all old party members). His son, Volodya, grew up believing in the party but, as he married and started raising a family, came to question the Communist system and eventually became a refusenik, a dissident who protested openly against the regime. The author met Volodya and his wife, Masha, in 1985 while on a trip to Moscow. This compelling account, which is also a chronicle of the Soviet dissident movement, highlights the heroism, and sacrifice, of those who stand up to the power of a totalitarian state. (Nov.) FYI: The title comes from a line of poetry by Aleksandr Pushkin.

Library Journal

Potok, the celebrated author of best-selling novels of Jewish life (e.g., The Chosen), here turns to biography to tell of two generations, father and son, in a Russian Jewish family. Against the backdrop of 19th-century Russian prejudice, the author portrays the life of the father, Solomon, who casts his lot as revolutionary, Bolshevik, and Soviet-and never looks back as the regime returns to its anti-Semitic past. Meanwhile, his son, Volodya, raised as an assimilated Jew in Soviet society, finds his own role as rebel, becoming a Zionist and leading dissident when faced with Soviet discrimination. Potok, a family friend, had access to their records to explore the rift between the generations and the broader question of the nature of the loyal citizen who turns revolutionary. His well-written, thought-provoking book will find an audience among generalists and historians. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/96.]-Rena Fowler, Humboldt State Univ., Arcata, Cal.

Kirkus Reviews

Potok, whose novels of families at odds with themselves ring so true (I Am the Clay, 1992, etc.), turns his attention to a deeply divided real-life family of Russian Jews.

Volodya Slepak's name will be familiar to anyone who was active in the movement to free Soviet Jews in the 1970s and '80s. He and his wife, Masha, were two of the most steadfast of the "refuseniks," Jewish activists who were denied exit visas to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union. What is less familiar about Slepak is his family's unusual history. His father, Solomon, was a high-ranking functionary in the Bolshevik movement who weathered the purges and bloodshed of the Stalin era. Virtually until his death in his late 70s, Solomon continued to uphold the party and the Kremlin, disdaining his son's political activities. Potok, who first encountered Volodya when he himself was active in the movement for Soviet Jewry, has had access to many hours of taped interviews with Volodya, Masha, their two sons, and other family members and friends, and he has used them to reconstruct the story of a bitterly estranged father and son, and the ideological civil war that split them apart. Regrettably, because so much of the history of Solomon's life is missing—the KGB wouldn't release his files, much of his early story can only be garnered by reconstruction and guesswork—the first half of the book is sketchy and unsatisfying. When Potok begins to trace Volodya's history, his novelist's eye and ear help bring the tale to life. But the end of the story is a somber one, with both Volodya and the author given to pessimistic ruminations on the future of their respective homelands.

While not on a par with his best fiction, this Potok offering will engage many readers, particularly those with vivid memories of the struggles of, and for, Soviet Jews.