Her debut novel was published in 1910 and explored the theme of her perception of "sexual identity and gender roles" of men and women in Russia.

[2][3] The Wrath of Dionysus was translated into English in 1997 at the initiative of Louise McReynolds, a professor of history, and Russian culture, at the University of Hawaii.

Her mother was Avdotya Panaeva, a writer of fiction and memoirs who co-edited the journal Sovremennik (1848–63), and her father was Apollon Golovachev, a journalist.

The book was described by scholar Laura Engelstein as "boulevard fiction" in The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia.

[5] In Libertinage in Russian Culture and Literature, Alexei Lalo stated that "[Nagródskaia] may have felt the need to represent the continuum of heterosexual and homosexual love and shifting gender identity more completely and insightfully than her contemporaries Zinovieva-Annibal or Verbitskaya did" and described the novel as "a more modern—and modernizing—literary phenomenon that many diverse researchers ... have taken it to be.