Trifonov'sDom na naberezhnoiand the Fortunes of Aesopian Speech

Abstract

In both the west and the Soviet Union the reputation of the late lurii Trifonov has come to rest principally on the candor with which his works, particularly those of his Moscow cycle, examine ethical themes. To non-Soviet scholars Trifonov offers the appealing biography of a writer who, having begun his career with a Stalinist novel (Studenty, 1950), nonetheless welcomed the Thaw (Utolenie zhazhdy, 1963) and then evolved into a chronicler of the moral decline into which Soviet society was sliding under Leonid Brezhnev.