This fictional farewell letter from a suicide is a groundbreaking key text of Russian exile literature, a risky manifesto of modern artistic decline, and a literary testament to a desperate search for God. In the tradition of Gogol and Dostoevsky, yet radically breaking with them, Ivanov issues a radical rejection of all culture. His furious and linguistically powerful nihilism is directed against love, sex, art, and politics—helpless veils over the cosmic ugliness of the world. Ivanov finds a way out of despair over the metaphysical absurdity of existence in a meaningless language, engaging in an open dialogue with Russian classics. The Decay of the Atom is a brilliant, tragic collage of reflections, paradoxes, eroticism, and poetry, first published in 1938 in a limited edition.