It is the final installment of Trifonov's cycle of Moscow novels set around The House on the Embankment, and concludes with the deaths in the 1930s of many of the figures in the cycle in Stalin's purges.
It is the final installment of Trifonov's cycle of Moscow novels set in the 1930s around the everyday lives of Muscovites, including the residents of the large House on the Embankment complex where Trifonov's parents had lived. The novel concludes with the deaths of many of the figures in the cycle in Stalin's purges.