[Ayn Rand] has written a novel ["We the Living"] to make it finally plain that the Soviet state, as far as she has been able to discover, is not only a farce on the face of it but is likewise fostering a race of "crippled, creeping, crawling, broken monstrosities." Miss Rand is determined that her readers shall have nothing less than the whole truth. Kira Argounova, her protagonist, speaks for her on at least one occasion: "For one insane second Kira wondered if she could ...

["We the Living"] is slavishly warped to the dictates of propaganda. Actually Miss Rand can command a good deal of Ayn Rand 1905–1982 Photograph by Phyllis Cerf Wagnernarrative skill, and her novel moves with alacrity and vigor upon occasion. It is only the blind fervor with which she has dedicated herself to the annihilation of the Soviet Union that has led her to blunder into palpable improbabilities. We refer strictly...

One often wishes that writers would yield a little more to their satirical inclinations, and that goes for Miss Ayn Rand. From internal evidence one would guess her to be a middle-class White or Whitish Russian living in exile in America, and We the Living (a title of no particular significance) is so frankly counter-revolutionary that it ought to annoy readers of Red or Reddish sympathies. Writing, often graphically, of life in Leningrad in the 'twenties she seems anxious to show the corruption of t...