Subsequently, he took a job as a reporter with the Komsomolskaya Pravda working at the construction of the Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam and Tayshet-Abakan railroad, and at the same time started to write short stories, mainly under influence of Vasily Aksyonov.
He published his book of short stories "Doroga dlinoy v sem' santimetrov" (The Seven Centimetre road) in 1960 and the novel "Solyony Arbuz" (The salted watermelon) in 1965.
[4] In 1975 he published the novel "Proishestviye v Nikolskom" (An incident in Nikolskoye),[2] a psychological drama about the rape of a girl by her classmates and the legal proceedings afterwards.
[1] The fantasy genre was not common in the Soviet Union at the time, and this added to the popularity of the novel, which eventually became the first part of the Ostankino Stories cycle.
Danilov, the Violist was compared with Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann since both novels study the diabolic and human origins of artistic creativity.,[2] and with Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.