The Polish translator and travel writer Magda Healey, reviewing the book for Bookbag, thought it "eminently readable, well flowing and colourful", though it showed a common fault of autobiographical debut novels, with too much content crammed in, the stories often not thoroughly explored. All the same, it had moving moments, some poetically beautiful passages, and "wonderfully absurd" scenes of farce. She found the sections of the engineer Nikolai's monumental history of tractors "a nice device".