The Kingdom of Agamemnon

The final novel by a titan of post-Soviet literature, this fantastical thriller about fakes and imposters in Russian history is both a rewrite of Greek myth and a spiritual sequel of sorts to The Brothers Karamazov.


Vladimir Sharov was one of the most significant and daring novelists of the post-Soviet era, a historian by training whose fantastical fictions unflinchingly plumbed the dark depths of Russia’s past. At once a rewrite of Greek myth and a sequel to The Brothers Karamazov, Sharov’s ninth and last novel is a clear-eyed reckoning with the legacies of Stalinist state terror set in twentieth and twenty-first century Moscow.

The Kingdom of Agamemnon revolves around the quest for a missing novel of the same name. Its author, Nikolai Zhestovsky, was a royal impostor, theologian, informer, and Gulag convict. At the centre of the quest is the evidence supplied by his daughter Galina. Calling herself Electra, she peels back the curtain to her family’s complex history, weaving a tale of vengeance and terror to reveal a world where the line between victims and perpetrators are hopelessly blurred.

A fast-paced thriller, full of leaps in time, unexpected historical parallels, and keen psychological insights, The Kingdom of Agamemnon is an intricate meditation on memory, culture, complicity, and the lures of narrative.“Vladimir Sharov relates to world history as if it were an ocean in his own backyard—an ocean in which he discovered new currents, tracked down sunken treasures, and caught a great many wondrous, fantastical fish of the highest literary quality.” —Vladimir SorokinThe grandson of Bundist revolutionaries from Ukraine, Vladimir Sharov (1952–2018) was born in Moscow to the physicist Anna Livanova and the journalist, children’s author, and novelist Alexander Sharov. His parents’ apartment became a meeting place for Gulag returnees, and the stories Sharov heard there as a child left enduring traces in his life and work. His nine novels, typically centering on the Revolution and the Stalinist era, seek the wellsprings of this period deep in Russia’s past and in its official and unofficial spiritual traditions. The target of critical acrimony in the early post-Soviet years, Sharov had by the end of his life earned the reputation of a “living classic” and became the recipient of several belated awards, including the Russian Booker Prize. His most celebrated works include The Rehearsals and Before and During.

Oliver Ready’s translations include Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment for Penguin Classics and Gogol’s And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press). From contemporary Russian fiction, he has translated three novels by Vladimir Sharov—Before and During, The Rehearsals, and Be as Children—and two volumes by Yuri Buida (all published by Dedalus). He is completing a book about Nikolai Gogol, and teaches Russian at the University of Oxford.

Boris Belenkin is a writer, historian, and activist born in Moscow. Since 1988, he has been on the staff of the Russian human rights organization Memorial, and is the Executive Director of Memorial’s Center for Scientific Information and Education. He lives in exile in the Czech Republic with his wife, Nina.