Marienhof gained further renown with his controversial fiction: "The Novel without Lies" (1926) and "The Cynics" (1928). The former presented his fictionalized (although still largely accurate) recollections of his friendship with Sergei Yesenin; the latter was a story of the life of young intellectuals during the revolution and the War communism. Both were met with sharp criticism in the Soviet press. "The Cynics" was published in Berlin (Petropolis), and not in the Soviet Union until 1988.
After the publication of his last novel, "Shaved Man", in 1930 in Berlin and parts of his historical novel "Ekaterina" (1936), Marienhof was reduced to writing for theater and later for radio without any hope of being published again. Yesenin's works were edited in the USSR for a long period of time to omit the dedications to Marienhof.