Novellas by him include "Roostetanud kastekann" (1971) and "Võõras või õige mees" (1978), which won an award in Estonia.
He participated in the German-Soviet war, first in a Soviet Destruction battalion, later in the Red Army's 8th Estonian Rifle Corps.
Although his first works of fiction (The Walls (1957)) closely follow the guidelines of socialist realism, he soon adopted a more multifaceted, undogmatic approach.
He treated careerism in Soviet society (The Case of Andres Lapateus), the fate of the Estonian soldiers mobilized to the Red Army (Enn Kalmu kaks mina (1960–61)).
Paul Kuusberg was a communist, but as a literary functionary, he tried to protect Estonian literature and literati from ideological suppression.