Solzhenitsyn, first impressions

I can tell he's Russian. I could tell even if I didn't already know who the writer is. He is similar to Tolstoi and Doestoevsky without being like them. You have the tangents that make you feel like you're reading five different books at the same time, but they are not self-encompassing, he doesn't take you for a circular walk before returning to the main story like they do, I have a feeling that this tangents will become the story and I will find out that they were not tangents at all, but lines that meet at some point in the future, it's just that my outlook was wrong.

I can tell you now, I'm hooked. I can be in my apartment in Crystal City or in Old Town Alexandria, but that doesn't matter... When I open the book, I'm in Russia, years before I was even born. I can see the streets, the dim lit offices, feel the cold of the Moscow winter. This book is already worth it, even if it's only for the beautiful and realistic images it has created in my mind. Better than a museum full of paintings.

But I should say something about the plot. There's an atomic bomb in the wrong hands. A Russian official that goes against his sense of loyalty and reports it to the US embassy. An American military attache that doesn't speak Russian and dismisses the call, tells the guy to call the Canadians instead, they speak better Russian... Even in this little detail, Solzhenitsyn captured the stereotypical American living abroad, the one that expects the rest of the world to speak proper American English -not even British!- American. But then the tangents start and I'm thrown in jail, celebrating Christmas with German prisoners, working in the radio lab and trying to figure out how to get real news, not the sanctioned version of the world published by Pravda.

I know I'm up to something, I just don't know what that is yet. I'm sure I'll find out soon.