This is the first book-length study of Andrei Bitov, one of contemporary Russia's most original writers. It plots his evolution from the post-Stalin years to his mature masterpieces of the glasnost era and assesses his place in the Russian and international literary tradition. Ellen Chances explores his themes, from the psychological effects of Stalin on Soviet society to universal questions such as the human being's relationship with nature, history and culture, and describes how his writings go beyond modernist and postmodernist fragmentation in search of the wholeness of life.