The Precipice (Russian: Обрыв, romanized: Obryv), also translated as Malinovka Heights, is the third and the last novel by Ivan Goncharov, first published in January–May 1869 issues of Vestnik Evropy magazine.

[1] The novel, conceived in 1849, took twenty years to be completed and has been preceded by the publication of the three extracts: "Sophja Nikolayevna Belovodova" (Sovremennik, No.2, 1860), "Grandmother" and "Portrait" (Otechestvennye Zapiski, Nos.1-2, 1861).

"Old memories of early youth, new encounters, landscapes of Volga banks, local scenes and situations, customs and manners, – all this stirred up my fantasies and I drew the plan for the novel in my head adding finishing touches to Oblomov.

From the moment that I started to write professionally (I was 30 and had had some experience already) I've had one artistic ideal in mind, that of creation of the character of an honest, kind and likeable man, a total idealist, who'd been struggling all his life searching for truth, encountering nothing but lies at every corner, finally lost all interest and fell into apathy, through realizing how inadequate he was and how weak was human nature as such.

Initially, according to the author, "this figure was never supposed to fit into the novel's major scheme, being part of a background, in shadows," a mere "introductory face, serving for Vera's character fuller realization."

"Dreams and aspirations of Raisky for me sound like a sonorous chord, praising a Woman, Motherland, God and love," he wrote in a letter to Mikhail Stasyulevich.

The heroine, Vera, is one of Russian literature's most independent and intelligent female characters, and the full-blooded portrait of Raisky's wise and strong grandmother is no less remarkable.

Vexed by the fact that it was the 'domestic nihilist' type to whom Goncharov had attributed this status of a 'doctrine-holder', the critic saw this as a sign of the novel's tendentiousness and accused its author for "a penchant for abstract humanism."

Goncharov remembered: "Stasyulevich related to me, how, every first day of a month, people would queue at the Vestnik Evropy's doors as if it were bakers' - those were couriers, eager to grab copies for their subscribers.