". . .Security/ is mortal's chiefest enemy", a line from MACBETH applies to this fine novel by Olga Grushin about a man who gives up his dreams of being an original artist to become a bureacratic functionary. Why does he do it? For the security of good pay, prestige, and a comfortable old age.
All of this carefully constructed life falls apart in Sukhanov's 50's when he meets an old artist friend who took a different route in life. The "falling apart" is managed by Grushin in a series of surrealistic images which recall the surrealistic youthful artistic urges of Sukhanov, now a Soviet functionary in l985.
Sukhanov is a weak individual, but that weakness is masked under a Soviet system, depicted as carefully as Sukanove's deterioration in this fine novel.