His works primarily deal with Stalinism, anti-Semitism, and the philosophical-religious view of a peaceful coexistence between Jews and Christians.

[2] Following World War II, Gorenstein struggled as an unskilled worker, until Nikita Khrushchev's De-Stalinization allowed him to return to Kiev.

Most of his adaptions were censored, but he managed to finish his works, including writing the script for the 1972 science fiction film Solaris, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.

That and his membership in the forbidden writers union and Almanach Metropol by Vasily Aksyonov got him in trouble with the Soviet government.

He received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service and emigrated to Berlin in 1979, working there as a writer until his death in 2002.

His work The House with the Tower has existentialist themes in the style of Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre.