Disappearance

First published posthumously in 1987 during the post-glasnost rise of literary freedom, Disappearance is a work of earlier times. Originally begun in the 1950s, this novel of childhood moves back and forth between 1937 and 1942, two troubled years in Soviet history, when the disappearances of family and friends during the Stalinist purges and the Second World War become regular occurrences in the difficult life of a young Russian man.