With the Coming of Darkness

I t helps to know something of the history of Russia under Stalin’s despotism to appreciate this novel fully. Reading it is an unforgettable introduction to that history—desperate men and women trying to preserve their faith in socialism as the darkness closes in on them. Midnight, first published in France in 1939 and written in French, lacks the concentrated force of Victor Serge’s The Case of Comrade Tulayev (a novel about the great purges, unfairly overshad...