Zinoviev gained fame primarily as the author of "Yawning Heights", a dissident writer, becoming probably the most famous representative of the third wave emigration after Alexander Solzhenitsyn. His "sociological novels" were generally popular, attracted the attention of critics and the press, were translated into various languages. According to Pavel Fokin, a critical bibliography of Zinoviev in Europe contains several hundred articles and reviews, a number of monographs. The experimental novelty of his poetics was quite understandable to the Western reader, taking into account the development of literature in the 20th century. His prose was highly praised, for example, by Anthony Burgess and Eugène Ionesco, who considered Zinoviev to be perhaps the largest contemporary writer. Subsequent works were perceived as weaker compared to the "infinite rage" of the "Yawning Heights" or the "directness" of the "Bright Future". Emigrant criticism, positively assessing the first two books, later ignored his works, not least because of the satire on dissidents.