Should I Not Spare

A new novel by Vladimir Sharov tells the story of a family whose fate closely intertwines with Russia’s fate in the 20th century. Revolution and the Civil War, collectivization and the Great Patriotic War, the years of “stagnation” and perestroika, and finally the social nightmare of the 1990s—these are not just background to the novel, but its subject, the material the writer uses both to create a work of art and, on the other hand, to study and interpret as a historian and, no less so, as a philosopher preoccupied with the philosophy of history.

In his prose, Vladimir Sharov organically combines the realistic tradition, phantasmagoria, irony, grotesque, and much more.

Vladimir Sharov (1952–2018) is a writer and historian, author of the novels “Rehearsals,” “Return to Egypt,” “Old Girl,” “Be Like Children,” “Kingdom of Agamemnon,” “The Resurrection of Lazarus,” a laureate of the “Big Book” and “Russian Booker” awards.

In all of his novels—or rather, in his philosophical parables—family chronicle is inseparably connected with the history of the country, while Biblical motifs intertwine with the theme of the Revolution.

“Sharov is the avatar of Andrei Platonov; the same type of artist… But if Platonov is a real ‘child,’ then Sharov is spoiled by knowledge of history, as if seduced by it.” — Lev Danilkin, “Afisha”

“The tangled skeins of history from which Sharov’s novels are woven give the texts something almost Tolstoy-like in scope.” — Oliver Ready, “The Times Literary Supplement”