The book, when finally published in Russia in 1991, is said to have sold a million copies. In the meantime Mr. Limonov had written, among other things, “His Butler’s Story” (1987), another fictionalized memoir, inspired by his time as a housekeeper to a wealthy Manhattanite in the late 1970s. The protagonist, Maggie Paley wrote in a review in The New York Times, had a decidedly sour outlook.

“He hates the underclass for being weak and stupid and the ruling class for being insensitive,” she wrote. “He hates women — whom he describes in terms of female sex organs — for using men. He considers the other Russians in New York to be snobs or boors. He has no use for political systems, Communist or capitalist. He believes in revolution as a ‘phenomenon of nature.’ Yet he’s made no plans to foment it.”

The review was critical of aspects of the book, but Ms. Paley found some merit in the work.

“Though Edward Limonov’s judgment may be faulty,” the review concluded, “he’s to be congratulated for his audacity, his insistence on saying what most people are afraid to say, his sheer, beautiful nerve.”

After living in France for a time, Mr. Limonov returned to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and created the National Bolshevik Party. He became a visible if sometimes hard-to-pin-down figure, something like the semifictional characters in his books.

“Limonov founded the NBP in 1993 after returning to Russia from years abroad,” The Times wrote about him in 2008. “Since then, his message has changed — from anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism to anti-Putinism and anti-fascism — though rabid nationalism has dominated.”