Memories of the Soviet era emerge through relics, landmarks, and fantastical occurrences in this satisfying collection . . . Lebedev adds vibrant lyrical descriptions to the strange interplay of past and present . . . There's a real payoff to these rich and ambiguous stories.

Publishers Weekly

We know from William Faulkner that 'the past is never dead, [and that] it is not even past'. Yet some pasts are more consequential than others, and Sergei Lebedev’s prose captures vividly the crippling presence of Russia’s Stalinist past in the life of contemporary Russian society. A very important read.

Jan Tomasz Gross

Lebedev's vibrant, steely fiction has always shown how the weight of Russia's past shapes its present, and this story collection also exhibits a fantastical edge ... the discerning will find much brilliance here

Library Journal

In these brilliant, terrifying stories, Lebedev makes the unseen visible, invoking the spirits of things and places, to say nothing of the anguished souls of the dead themselves. Only a poet – or a shaman – could make us all see what is here. The tales are wonderfully told, completely real and harrowing.

Catherine Merridale, author of Lenin on the Train

In this striking new collection of eleven stories by the leading exponent of Russian memory fiction, perpetrators conceal their guilt, descendants replay past traumas, and even the most gruesome ‘evidence of evil’ produces little punishment. As state controls over Russian history and memory grow ever tighter, these terrifying tales of the unburied and uncanny warn of the dire consequences of forgetting, and urgently appeal for remembrance and repentance.

Professor Polly Jones