Oblivion

“An important book about where Russia is today, with poetic descriptions and unforgettable images evoking that nation’s often elusive attempts to understand its dark past. I stand in awe of both the author and translator.”

—Jack F. Matlock, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union

“The subject matter of Oblivion is the eerie frozen landscape scattered with the human detritus of an inhuman bygone era. What brings it back from oblivion is the author’s exceptional power of language. A haunting read.”

—Michael Zantovsky, former press secretary to Czech President Vaclav Havel, author of Havel: A Life and former Czech Ambassador to the United States, Britain and Israel

“Beautifully written, haunting and unputdownable. A masterpiece novel which relates the horrors of Russia’s unburied Soviet past through the eyes of a man revisiting—and filling in the gaps in—his half-understood childhood.”

—Edward Lucas, senior editor, The Economist and author of The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West

“Packs a wicked emotional punch through fierce poetic imagery… Lebedev takes his place beside Solzhenitsyn and other great writers who have refused to abide by silence… Courageous and devastating.”

— Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)

“Opening in stately fashion and unfolding ever faster with fierce, intensive elegance, this first novel discloses the weight of Soviet history and its consequences… Highly recommended for anyone serious about literature or history.”

—Library Journal (Starred review)

“An extraordinary book that takes readers across Russia’s desolate northern landscape and turns up secrets about the terrible legacy of the Soviet gulags, described through evocative, often poetic portraits of people and places.”

—Celestine Bohlen, International New York Times columnist and former Moscow correspondent for The New York Times

“Extraordinarily intense and beautifully written … Oblivion haunts this novel. By writing it, Lebedev has given the past a present and a presence.”

—Judy Dempsey, senior associate at Carnegie Europe and editor-in-chief of Strategic Europe

“Sergei Lebedev’s debut novel is a haunting tale about the loss of national memory and its moral consequences for the individual.”

—Solomon Volkov, author of Shostakovich and Stalin, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History, and The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn

“Oblivion is the poetic monologue of a post-Soviet flâneur reflecting on the nation’s grim past. Pastoral vignettes about peaceful dacha life quickly morph into a novelistic version of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’.”

—Serguei A. Oushakine, Professor of Anthropology and Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University

“A monomaniacal meditation on memory and forgetting… Lebedev’s magnificent novel has the potency to become a mirror and a wake-up call to a Russia that is blind to history.”

—Neue Zürcher Zeitung

“Sergei Lebedev opens up new territory in literature. Lebedev’s prose lives from the precise images and the author’s colossal gift of observation.”

—Der Spiegel

“The beauty of the language is almost impossible to bear. The novel luxuriates in poetic language.”

—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung