Viktor Erofeev is one of the most prominent figures in Russian literature in the period of transition from Soviet to post-Soviet times. In his critical ideas and fictional writing Erofeev is indebted to the tradition of Western and Russian modernism and to his association with unofficial Soviet culture. His critical contributions to Russian literature are examples of his deep conviction that realism in its nineteenth-century forms and socialist realism had failed to answer fundamental questions of existence; according to Erofeev, a new kind of literature had to replace realism in order to describe the omnipotent evil of Soviet society. Practicing in his own fiction what he preaches in his criticism, Erofeev has written on the taboo topics of Soviet literature. His works are saturated with graphic descriptions of bodily functions, sex, sadistic violence against innocent victims (including children), and death. The intentional superabundance of these phenomena in his...