Evgenii Kharitonov's principal work is Pod domashnim arestom (Under House Arrest), a collection of prosaic and poetic texts written between 1969 and 1981 and published in book form only in 1993. While Kharitonov's work was a product of the 1970s, it was read only in the 1980s in emigration and, much more widely, in the 1990s in Russia. Kharitonov's prose influenced many contemporary writers and received an intense critical response when it was finally published in full in Russia in 1991 to 1993.

During his lifetime Kharitonov was known more as a man of the theater than as a writer. Evgenii Vladimirovich Kharitonov was born on 11 June 1941 in Novosibirsk and was brought up by his mother, Kseniia Ivanovna, who was a doctor. Kharitonov had great affection for her throughout his life, but he almost never showed his writings to her. In 1958 Kharitonov moved to Moscow to study acting at the All-Union State College...