The Soviety writer Yury Trifonov (1925-81) made a literary reputation in the West with his acclaimed novel The House on the Embankment and a series of novellas which described the lives of ordinary Muscovites. Trifonov was the leading writer f his generation in the Soviet Union, the author of six novels, several collections of stories, four novellas, as well as non-fiction. He became a controversial figure when he broke with the Socialist Realist tradition and began to portray the lives of the urban intelligentsia and middle class with startling candor.