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Denisov of the Dantesque "Sleepwalker in the Mist" awakens in mid-life surrounded by dark woods and takes up the search for meaning his various attempts at creation, leadership, and sacrifice ending in farce. Her most notable stories are works of virtuosic invention. The mythical dimensions of this conflict are highlighted in her stories by frequent use of fantastic elements and folkloric allusions, such as the transformation of the self-centered Serafim into Gorynych the Dragon (Serafim), or the bird of death, Sirin, symbolizing Petya's loss of innocence in "Date with a Bird." Although she draws on the texture of late Soviet reality with witty, acerbic penetration, her critique of modern society travels well. Tolstaya's initial impact on Russian letters was made by a series of short stories centering on the conflict between imagination, spirit, and value, on the one hand, and a bleak social order of conformity and consumerism, cultural and spiritual degradation, and rapacious and cynical materialism on the other. Her activities expanded subsequently to include university teaching (at Skidmore College, among other institutions), journalistic writing, and completion of a dark futuristic novel, The Slynx.

Their imaginative brilliance and humane depth won success with both Soviet and international readers. Born in 1951 in Leningrad, she graduated from Leningrad State University with a degree in Philology and Classics, then worked as an editor at Nauka before publishing her first short stories in the early 1980s. Tolstaya is an original, captivating fiction writer of the perestroika and post-Soviet period.