The novel “The Burn” in the middle of the stagnant 1970s turned out to be free from the pressure of ideology and from the “internal censor,” free from the clichés of socialist realism, from any prohibitions and dogmas. In a single book, the writer said everything that could not be said — funny about Soviet reality, terrifying about Stalin’s camps, candid about sex — honest about villains of every kind, romantically about youth and about himself, and, as always, piercingly about the fates of the Russian intelligentsia. This novel was written simply because it could not have not been written. It burst out of the soul like a cry, like a breath. An incredible, impossible, unimaginably high degree of freedom for those years — genuine searing prose.