What do you think?
Rate this book
Another Life: The House on the Embankment
The novellas about middle-class Soviet life address marital discord, mid-life crisis, and soulless ambition within larger portraits of lives transformed to agonies of tension, frustration, and inarticulated rage
350 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1986
4 people are currently reading
268 people want to read
About the author
Yury Trifonov
37 books23 followersYury Valentinovich Trifonov was a Soviet writer. He was a leading figure of the Soviet "Urban Prose".
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
April 19, 2018
Foreword, by John Updike
--Another Life
--The House on the Embankment
--Another Life
--The House on the Embankment
August 17, 2014
I was originally assigned to read the second novella of this volume for a class on Russian history, which I took as I prepared to enter graduate school for history. The course was on the Soviet period, and the novel addressed the later period, when the first flush of the revolution was over, and aging Communists vied for position of power. It’s hard for me to believe, reading Trifonov now, that he was approved to write during the Soviet era, so critical is he of the social conditions of the USSR. But, I wonder whether this is a result of the biases I bring to the text, as a middle-class American raised during the Cold War, or if it so happens that I am better able to “understand” Trifonov than his would-be Communist censors.
The volume consists of two novellas, or povest’ written in Russian in the mid-1970s. The first one, Another Life, concerns a woman whose husband dies at the beginning of the story, triggering a retrospective grieving process in which the story of their relationship is told in a series of flashbacks. The technique struck me as quite clever and also surprisingly successful, although Trifonov did not give as satisfying a resolution as I had anticipated, leaving many loose ends (as there often are in life as well). We learn early on not to trust the narrator: Olga Vasilievna is a deeply narcissistic person, who thinks of the actions of others only as they impact her, and she is generally aware only of the surface of events, not their deeper meaning. At first, I suspected that the ultimate moral would be that she had, in fact, killed her husband by being a source of stress and worry in his life, but as I read on, it seemed to me that the true source of Sergei’s sorrow was not his wife, but the demands of a society based on compromise and political back-scratching. There is a scene in which his former co-workers demand his research notes, with the implication that a case may be made for his political censure, but this is not pressed home, it simply haunts the pages like the ghost of a threat. This may be an example of how his criticisms snuck past the Soviet editors…or is it more important that Sergei was, toward the end of his life, lured into a shadow world of “parapsychological” research and séances, thus losing his grip on the official atheism the state would prescribe as healthy and realistic? Either way, I found the book fascinating, in a depressed Russian sort of way.
The novella I read for school, The House on the Embankment, is similar but I think even more cleverly constructed and more overtly critical. It involves an academic apparatchik whose main interest in life when we meet him is getting ahold of a fancy table for his communal apartment. He runs into an old school chum and this triggers a series of memories of how he wound up in a position of authority and security in life. Primarily, we learn, he has succeeded by refusing to make decisions, by having no loyalties (or even any conception of them), and by valuing things over people. His reflection on his school days are telling. The chum he ran into, Lev Shulepa, had lived in “the house on the embankment,” which during their youth was a fancy place for people with important connections. Glebov, the narrator, remembers the elevator men and the fancy trim on the walls. He had always lived in a less desirable area, and clearly envied the students lucky enough to grow up in the house on the embankment. Lev becomes a close friend, but also a symbol of those who are lucky enough to have everything given to them. I found myself reflecting on my own childhood friendship with such a classmate, and wondering whether I had grown up to become a Glebov. It seems to me a remarkable accomplishment in writing to be able to make the audience question their own moral standards, but maybe mine is a unique reaction. The other impressive thing is, as with Another Life, that we are able to simultaneously identify with Glebov and come to realize over the novella what a selfish and loathsome character he really is, despite his myopia as a narrator and his constant justifications. Trifonov “cheats” just a little bit by shifting narrators for brief periods and telling us what his friends thought of him from the perspective of one of the other children from school. In spite of that, it remains a very effective story.
The volume consists of two novellas, or povest’ written in Russian in the mid-1970s. The first one, Another Life, concerns a woman whose husband dies at the beginning of the story, triggering a retrospective grieving process in which the story of their relationship is told in a series of flashbacks. The technique struck me as quite clever and also surprisingly successful, although Trifonov did not give as satisfying a resolution as I had anticipated, leaving many loose ends (as there often are in life as well). We learn early on not to trust the narrator: Olga Vasilievna is a deeply narcissistic person, who thinks of the actions of others only as they impact her, and she is generally aware only of the surface of events, not their deeper meaning. At first, I suspected that the ultimate moral would be that she had, in fact, killed her husband by being a source of stress and worry in his life, but as I read on, it seemed to me that the true source of Sergei’s sorrow was not his wife, but the demands of a society based on compromise and political back-scratching. There is a scene in which his former co-workers demand his research notes, with the implication that a case may be made for his political censure, but this is not pressed home, it simply haunts the pages like the ghost of a threat. This may be an example of how his criticisms snuck past the Soviet editors…or is it more important that Sergei was, toward the end of his life, lured into a shadow world of “parapsychological” research and séances, thus losing his grip on the official atheism the state would prescribe as healthy and realistic? Either way, I found the book fascinating, in a depressed Russian sort of way.
The novella I read for school, The House on the Embankment, is similar but I think even more cleverly constructed and more overtly critical. It involves an academic apparatchik whose main interest in life when we meet him is getting ahold of a fancy table for his communal apartment. He runs into an old school chum and this triggers a series of memories of how he wound up in a position of authority and security in life. Primarily, we learn, he has succeeded by refusing to make decisions, by having no loyalties (or even any conception of them), and by valuing things over people. His reflection on his school days are telling. The chum he ran into, Lev Shulepa, had lived in “the house on the embankment,” which during their youth was a fancy place for people with important connections. Glebov, the narrator, remembers the elevator men and the fancy trim on the walls. He had always lived in a less desirable area, and clearly envied the students lucky enough to grow up in the house on the embankment. Lev becomes a close friend, but also a symbol of those who are lucky enough to have everything given to them. I found myself reflecting on my own childhood friendship with such a classmate, and wondering whether I had grown up to become a Glebov. It seems to me a remarkable accomplishment in writing to be able to make the audience question their own moral standards, but maybe mine is a unique reaction. The other impressive thing is, as with Another Life, that we are able to simultaneously identify with Glebov and come to realize over the novella what a selfish and loathsome character he really is, despite his myopia as a narrator and his constant justifications. Trifonov “cheats” just a little bit by shifting narrators for brief periods and telling us what his friends thought of him from the perspective of one of the other children from school. In spite of that, it remains a very effective story.
June 9, 2021
Yuri Trifonov’s 'Another Life' and 'The House on the Embankment'.
Part of his Moscow Cycle, these two stories show Trifonov at his most cutting, insightful and psychologically profound. 'Another Life' depicts the emotional vacuum left by the death of a husband, as his widow recalls the profound but testing connection between them. She leaves her existential stance ‘nothing but chemistry… Chemistry and pain—that is all that death and life consist of.’ Fending off hawkish scavengers and back-stabbing friends from within Soviet academia, and the prying of her step-mother over her husbands memory, she comes to rediscover his genius and the bonds of their shared inner existence, their other life.
'The House on the Embankment' attacks the same self-serving, grasping nature of those who discard others to get ahead, but instead draws on different voices from within a childhood friendship circle, showing the jealousies, pettiness and grudges that easily end lives and dreams, and ruin careers and families. But more than this, it indicts careless opportunism, particularly ideological and party careerism that refuses to demonstrate compassion. And so Trifonov’s stories become a scathing critique of sterile academia. The pawns in his set pieces would rather turn their backs on suffering and slander while claiming bystander status whilst playing key roles in oppression. They perpetuate and compound these abuses, ultimately casting aside all principles and betraying those once closest to them.
I just want to keep delving into the stories of the Moscow cycle, their nauseating claustrophobia, their sharp nuanced critique of class and materialism, and inner life that explores human nature and not just Soviet culture of the 60s. For they twist, to keep the reader tender to their surprising protagonists, and demonstrate sudden liberating expansiveness of writing that is ‘as inexhaustible as [a] cold, windy expanse, vast as that boundless city fading from sight with the coming of evening.’
Part of his Moscow Cycle, these two stories show Trifonov at his most cutting, insightful and psychologically profound. 'Another Life' depicts the emotional vacuum left by the death of a husband, as his widow recalls the profound but testing connection between them. She leaves her existential stance ‘nothing but chemistry… Chemistry and pain—that is all that death and life consist of.’ Fending off hawkish scavengers and back-stabbing friends from within Soviet academia, and the prying of her step-mother over her husbands memory, she comes to rediscover his genius and the bonds of their shared inner existence, their other life.
'The House on the Embankment' attacks the same self-serving, grasping nature of those who discard others to get ahead, but instead draws on different voices from within a childhood friendship circle, showing the jealousies, pettiness and grudges that easily end lives and dreams, and ruin careers and families. But more than this, it indicts careless opportunism, particularly ideological and party careerism that refuses to demonstrate compassion. And so Trifonov’s stories become a scathing critique of sterile academia. The pawns in his set pieces would rather turn their backs on suffering and slander while claiming bystander status whilst playing key roles in oppression. They perpetuate and compound these abuses, ultimately casting aside all principles and betraying those once closest to them.
I just want to keep delving into the stories of the Moscow cycle, their nauseating claustrophobia, their sharp nuanced critique of class and materialism, and inner life that explores human nature and not just Soviet culture of the 60s. For they twist, to keep the reader tender to their surprising protagonists, and demonstrate sudden liberating expansiveness of writing that is ‘as inexhaustible as [a] cold, windy expanse, vast as that boundless city fading from sight with the coming of evening.’
August 13, 2015
This book contains two short novellas that provide a marvellous view of life of academia behind the Iron Curtain in Russia from the 1940s to the 1970s.
One is struck by the relative poverty of the country. For financial reasons couples must live with the Mother-in-Law of one of the two. University professors struggle to find the money to buy acceptable clothes for their children. No one owns a car.
The academic politics in the Soviet Union seem to be even nastier than in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." It is the nasty academic infighting the provides the central drama for both books.
In "Another Life" our central protagonist is one of the losers in the dog-eat-dog struggle. Trifonov plays a dazzling game with the reader. We do not know if the hero is undone because he is too idealistic, too lazy, too much of a drinker or disastrously inept at office politics. Certainly all four factors seem to be at play. However, fail he does and with dreadful consequences for all around him. Trifonov tells this woeful tale with brio and efficiency.
In "The House on the Embankment", our hero is absolutely abject. He excels at sitting on the fence. He remains loyal until the last possible moment before betraying his friends and loved ones in the most vile and opportunistic manner. The tale is told brilliantly and has moments of great wit.
These two books provide tremendous insight into life behind the iron curtain. They are nasty however and likely to nauseate all but those who are highly interested in the era.
One is struck by the relative poverty of the country. For financial reasons couples must live with the Mother-in-Law of one of the two. University professors struggle to find the money to buy acceptable clothes for their children. No one owns a car.
The academic politics in the Soviet Union seem to be even nastier than in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." It is the nasty academic infighting the provides the central drama for both books.
In "Another Life" our central protagonist is one of the losers in the dog-eat-dog struggle. Trifonov plays a dazzling game with the reader. We do not know if the hero is undone because he is too idealistic, too lazy, too much of a drinker or disastrously inept at office politics. Certainly all four factors seem to be at play. However, fail he does and with dreadful consequences for all around him. Trifonov tells this woeful tale with brio and efficiency.
In "The House on the Embankment", our hero is absolutely abject. He excels at sitting on the fence. He remains loyal until the last possible moment before betraying his friends and loved ones in the most vile and opportunistic manner. The tale is told brilliantly and has moments of great wit.
These two books provide tremendous insight into life behind the iron curtain. They are nasty however and likely to nauseate all but those who are highly interested in the era.
April 19, 2024
Yuri Trifonov was a Soviet writer. His father was an Old Bolshevik and commander in the Red Army; he later disappeared during Stalin's Great Purge of 1937. Trifonov had a significant literary career, first within the Soviet Union (winning the Stalin Prize in 1951), and, later, internationally, when his writing became less political and far more personal. This later work, such as these two novellas, empathetically dissects characters' private lives with their struggles, promises, disappointments, tedium, and little victories. His prose is highly detailed, at times humorous, with embedded anecdotes and circular plot lines that can be hard to follow.
The forward by John Updike was fabulous.
The forward by John Updike was fabulous.
March 30, 2022
Full disclosure—I read only The House on the Embankment; I plan to read Another Life some other time.
An interesting and somewhat meandering story that explores the psychology of an individual Soviet man in the post-war era.
An interesting and somewhat meandering story that explores the psychology of an individual Soviet man in the post-war era.
February 20, 2013
Still scratching my head about this one. A rather bland read, though it did give insight into the Soviet era. What is impressive is that it was written during the Soviet era - and that is what kept me going. The fact that there was criticism of the system is rather amazing. However, as far as a piece of literature, I am rather baffled by the hyperbolic praise on the back cover....
August 8, 2010
a couple of cool books about miserable peoplebeing miserable in communist russia. only, they have the same stupid aspirations toward middle class complacency that americans do. perhaps we're not so different after all.
May 31, 2017
هر چقدر گشتم نتوانستم ترجمه فارسی کتاب را بیابم. خیلی عجیب است که نوشتههای چنین نویسنده تاثیرگذاری ترجمه نشده باشد. تبحر نویسنده در تحلیل روانشناسانه شخصیتها و ترسیم فضای اجتماعی شوروی ستودنی است.
June 23, 2021
This is a two novella review. The copy my local library found had both so I had to read both, sensible right? Both novella's are about peoples life. Lets dive in.
Another Life looks at personal relationships after a loved one dies. Now the loved one is 40ish and dies well before his time, even for 1970's Moscow. His wife has to deal with his death while remembering all their time together both good and bad. Her daughter supports her but is also dealing with her own grief and being 16. 16 teen year olds are a mound of emotions especially when they loose a boy and especially after loosing their dad. The mother in law is a continual problem who always answers every question or feeling with, "Well back in the revolution" followed by more preNEP remberance that has nothing to do with the current situation except, that when she is done the story does. The dead husbands colleagues try tube helpful butter really just filling in check marks on the committee checklist. Mostly life for our heroin is hard with out her husband and those who have lost some one will relate quite well.
House On the Embankment was the work I wanted and it was worth the wait. This too is a remembrance book of Gabevo who lived next to the House. The House is the home to Soviet elite but the neighborhood kids all go to the same school so Gabevo meets the elite in school and breaks all the class distinctions that the revolution was supposed to break. He also succeeds and then after a chance meeting with his old school chum, Lev, who has gone from the House on the Embankment to a hovel alone and lives in a single room in the bad part of town. Gabevo looks back on their lives. Also the lives of the rest of his school friends, one of whom may have been his future wife, but wasn't. Again its all rememberance and a Wonderfull look into the normal lives of normal Russians inn the last days of Stalin and all the rehabilitation that followed his death. A wonderful read.
Another Life looks at personal relationships after a loved one dies. Now the loved one is 40ish and dies well before his time, even for 1970's Moscow. His wife has to deal with his death while remembering all their time together both good and bad. Her daughter supports her but is also dealing with her own grief and being 16. 16 teen year olds are a mound of emotions especially when they loose a boy and especially after loosing their dad. The mother in law is a continual problem who always answers every question or feeling with, "Well back in the revolution" followed by more preNEP remberance that has nothing to do with the current situation except, that when she is done the story does. The dead husbands colleagues try tube helpful butter really just filling in check marks on the committee checklist. Mostly life for our heroin is hard with out her husband and those who have lost some one will relate quite well.
House On the Embankment was the work I wanted and it was worth the wait. This too is a remembrance book of Gabevo who lived next to the House. The House is the home to Soviet elite but the neighborhood kids all go to the same school so Gabevo meets the elite in school and breaks all the class distinctions that the revolution was supposed to break. He also succeeds and then after a chance meeting with his old school chum, Lev, who has gone from the House on the Embankment to a hovel alone and lives in a single room in the bad part of town. Gabevo looks back on their lives. Also the lives of the rest of his school friends, one of whom may have been his future wife, but wasn't. Again its all rememberance and a Wonderfull look into the normal lives of normal Russians inn the last days of Stalin and all the rehabilitation that followed his death. A wonderful read.
October 2, 2024
It's hard to differentiate which of the two short stories I enjoyed more.
On one hand, Another Life represents the various choices one makes, but also one's recollection about past events. Was life as good as you remembered? Or is the nostalgia driving new emotions about past events? Another Life also conveys the many dimensions embedded within humans. Sure, we all have desires and dreams for ourselves and the people we love. But also, we all possess traits that many would view as inherently "bad". But these "bad" attributes of a person's character represents the flaws that highlight the imperfections of human. Our selfishness that is attached to our hopes and dreams. Trifonov's ability to encapsulate the complexity of trauma, dreams and time is compelling and I thoroughly enjoyed Another Life - it also has made me more cautious in a marriage (but then again, at the rate life is going. Marriage, or love for that matter, is nothing more than a mere fantasy)
The House on the Embankment is quite similar to Another Life, where the protagonist reminisces about their youth. Also both characters portray their view on classism in differing ways. Glebov has an internal struggle about relating to his status and place in society. However, he finds love with someone from that upperclass, but also supervised by his lover's father. Like Another Life, this short story draws on ideas of paths in life. Surprisingly, I found that many of the subtext of this story is that neutrality or indifference is a character killer and ultimately makes one's life void. I still have think more about this short story before I get deeper into it.
On one hand, Another Life represents the various choices one makes, but also one's recollection about past events. Was life as good as you remembered? Or is the nostalgia driving new emotions about past events? Another Life also conveys the many dimensions embedded within humans. Sure, we all have desires and dreams for ourselves and the people we love. But also, we all possess traits that many would view as inherently "bad". But these "bad" attributes of a person's character represents the flaws that highlight the imperfections of human. Our selfishness that is attached to our hopes and dreams. Trifonov's ability to encapsulate the complexity of trauma, dreams and time is compelling and I thoroughly enjoyed Another Life - it also has made me more cautious in a marriage (but then again, at the rate life is going. Marriage, or love for that matter, is nothing more than a mere fantasy)
The House on the Embankment is quite similar to Another Life, where the protagonist reminisces about their youth. Also both characters portray their view on classism in differing ways. Glebov has an internal struggle about relating to his status and place in society. However, he finds love with someone from that upperclass, but also supervised by his lover's father. Like Another Life, this short story draws on ideas of paths in life. Surprisingly, I found that many of the subtext of this story is that neutrality or indifference is a character killer and ultimately makes one's life void. I still have think more about this short story before I get deeper into it.
February 19, 2022
For me it was close to a four star. What is interesting about these two novellas is that they give us a glimpse inside life in the soviet union. For those that would expect the hysterics of the west media reflected by a russian writer, they will be disapointed. The writing is much more subtle than that and it shows the human side of living inside a system that because of it's lacking market sgnals settles for a beaurocratic system of assigning merits. The writing is brilliant. The three stars is because for long stretches the writing meanders along seemingly irrelevant issues.
September 15, 2022
I have read only Another Life and probably won't read The House on the Embankment. I had a hard time with it. It was occasionally interesting and compelling for a while, but there seemed to be no continuity, no journey. I was very busy during the reading period though, so I couldn't spend much time at a stretch, so that may have been part of the problem. Was entirely new information about Soviet life of the period. Glad it wasn't me.
November 26, 2022
Three stars for Another Life - Four stars for The House on the Embankment. There is something Dostoyevskyian about Trifonov's intense immersion in the mind of his characters - and their inability to do the right thing - but the momentum always seems to slow towards the end. Still, a precise insight into mid-century Soviet life.
November 19, 2020
read "the house on the embankment" for my slavic r5b class. my takeaway for this book is that i'm very confused... i dont think i'm intelligent enough to understand what the meaning of the book is and i dont even know who the second narrator is
August 7, 2018
The first novella was really good so the second very similar but just pretty good novella brought it down
February 9, 2023
Quite enjoyed this, especially "Another Life." Reminded me of John Williams' "Stoner" in depicting life, though with more oddities. A great discovery and the kind of storytelling I really enjoy.
January 18, 2024
Realistic, sometimes heartbreaking, atmospheric immersion in 1950s-1970s Soviet life
March 4, 2024
I wanted to give this a chance. But all things Russian—even Soviet-era ones—put me off these days. ☮️🇺🇦🔜🙏🏼🌻
February 8, 2025
"Another life" is such a wonderful description of life in urban USSR during the last days of the communist regime, while at the same time a brilliant anatomy of love and married life.
December 25, 2020
The House on the Embankment: Stealthily anti-establishment and therefore lauded by the soviet regime, these stories strike at the heart of everything wrong with socialist realism while being completely within its boundaries. Worth several rereads if only to marvel at the deft simultaneous praise and scorn of a self-absorbed psychopath who destroys everyone to get his. Read this first in 2004 and didn't really get it. Then read it again 12 years later and got more than I bargained for.
March 25, 2014
Two exquisite novellas that deal with 20th century themes in a 19th century style. The back cover cites Chekhov, but I hear the slightly more expansive tones of Theordor Fontane, especially in the first story, "Another Life", which is as fine a piece of writing as I've ever read.
June 30, 2022
Glabov has to mitigate a life between choosing desire over success while battling this crippling inability to make a decision. “‘What a pointless, idiotic world it is… Who can explain it?... And yet how we long to stay in this world.’” –Professor Ganchuk, pg. 350
August 9, 2009
Excellent book
July 14, 2010
Particularly interesting for me as I currently live in this haunted house! Well, I haven't seen any ghosts yet...
November 29, 2010
Only read "House on the Embankment."
April 17, 2016
3.5 (House on the Embankment)
December 30, 2024
House on the Embankment has to be one of the most memorable tales I have ever read. Fragile, delicate, and haunting!
December 20, 2012
I placed this book on my shelf while moving and was immediately inspired to re-read it.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews