An Inconclusive Diagnosis

A new book by the author of the autobiographical novel "Peredelkin: Beyond the Fences." This narrative is woven from memories of people, events, and places that, to a large extent, shaped the face of 20th-century literature.

Alexander Nilin is a sports columnist, the son of Pavel Nilin, a Soviet writer, screenwriter, playwright, and journalist, a laureate of the Stalin Prize (second degree). For many years, the Nilin family lived in Peredelkin, neighboring Boris Pasternak, Konstantin Simonov, Alexander Fadeev, as well as the Kataev and Chukovsky families.

For those who value engaging and informative memoirs: every mentioned name, place, and episode here carries a distinct literary-historical meaning and a strong emotional resonance.

Alexander Nilin (born 1940) is a prose writer and memoirist, the author of several biographical books, including "Peredelkin: Beyond the Fences."

In his new novel "The Unfinished Diagnosis," Nilin writes about friends and contemporaries known to the general public, and about the closest ones—those who make up his family circle. Among the former are Viktor Shklovsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Yevgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Igor Kio, Leonid and Galina Brezhneva, Mikhail Ardov, Alexander Maryamov, Viktor Merezhko, and many others. Nearby is his wife, Natalya Ivanova; his father, Pavel Nilin; and his brother, Mikhail. And there are also university exams, favorite places—"Airport" and Peredelkin—and "The Machine Chestnut"—everything the author himself calls "unspent illusions."

"It seems to me that through my life I used the opportunity to portray the time in which I lived—and the continuation should have followed" (Alexander Nilin).