Temperamentally and intellectually, Natan Sharansky is a man very much like many of us--which makes this account of his arrest on political grounds, his trial, and ten years' imprisonment in the Orwellian universe of the Soviet gulag particularly vivid and resonant.

Since Fear No Evil was originally published in 1988, the Soviet government that imprisoned Sharansky has collapsed. Sharansky has become an important national leader in Israel--and serves as Israel's diplomatic liaison to the former Soviet Union New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Serge Schmemann reflects on those...