It is hard to understand how a writer like [Ehrenburg], who in his Russian-Parisian days had been one of the most brilliant satirists of the 'twenties, could ever have turned out the sad propaganda work represented by so many of his later novels. (p. 83)

From the nature of Ehrenburg's stormy career, it can be no simple [task to judge this writer]…. It is not too much to say that his latest writings and utterances all suggest an unsurprising desire for expiation and rehabilitation. Perhaps no writer has survived so many friends dead by execution or suicide as Ehrenburg. How should one judge his efforts at rehabilitation? There is not the slightest reason to doubt the genuineness of his newly proclaimed Jewish sentiments, but in this very fact lies pathos. In informed Jewish circles, Ehrenburg's role during Stalin's pogrom has been the subject of bitter attack, but from the...