This is a philosophical novel that is also rich in psychological, social, and sensuous detail. Although it was never publishable in the USSR, it now stands as one of the most celebrated of Soviet novels. It is one of the most ambitious and moving of Andrey Platonov's efforts to take the measure of a world undergoing revolutionary transformation. The full text is translated into English for the first time by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler. Platonov's world is a world of orphans searching for family and home. The Russian people have lost both their Mother Earth and their Father in Heaven. Nothing is left to them but the horizon-a shining but ever-receding future.