A bloody satire of post-Soviet nostalgia for the time of the tsars, Roman is a foundational early work from one of the most acclaimed writers working in Russia today.

Beginning in a nineteenth-century realist literary style, Roman follows its titular character (his name homophonous with “роман,” the Russian word for “novel”) as he leaves an incipient legal career in the capitol to become a painter, traveling home to the country estate where he grew up. Here, he indulges in all the activities of the tsarist gentry: winding conversations over leisurely meals, hunting, fishing, elaborate Easter banquets, and even a whirlwind romance. But as ominous cracks begin to appear in this nostalgic pastiche, Roman’s story takes a shocking, brutal turn.

A writer renowned as a brilliant literary stylist and a purveyor of the provocative and grotesque, Vladimir Sorokin deftly turns the Russian classic literary form on its head in this richly allusory novel. Now available to English-speaking audiences for the first time in Max Lawton’s translation, Roman is a clever, disquieting tale that will have readers hanging on to the bloody last page.