‘One of the most fascinating books in post-Soviet literature… even twenty years after its publication and translated into English, Sharov’s Before & During reads as if it were completed yesterday.’
Mark Lipovetsky, The Russian Review
‘If Russian history is indeed a commentary to the Bible, then Before and During is an audacious attempt to shine a mystical light on (Russian history), an unusual take on the 20th century’s apocalypse that leaves the reader to look for their own explications.’
Anna Aslanyan, The Independent
‘A Menippean satire in which historical reality, in all its irreversible awfulness, is for a moment scrambled, eroticized… and illuminated by hilarious monologues of the dead.’
Caryl Emerson, The Times Literary Supplement
‘Translation should not strive for perfection, but for excellence. Perfection is impossible, whereas excellence is only nearly impossible. And excellence is what Oliver Ready achieves in his rendering of Before and During by Vladimir Sharov. He captures the clear voice and confused mentality of the narrator who is able to love both Christ and Lenin, who prays for the sinner Ivan the Terrible and who tries to unravel the legacy of the Bolsheviks.’
Jury of the 2015 Read Russia Prize