The Kingdom of Agamemnon

The final novel by a titan of post-Soviet literature, this fantastical thriller about fakes and imposters in Russian history is both a rewrite of Greek myth and a spiritual sequel of sorts to The Brothers Karamazov. Vladimir Sharov was one of the most significant novelists of the post-Soviet era, a historian by training whose fantastical fictions unflinchingly plumbed the dark depths of Russia’s past. At once a rewrite of Greek myth and a sequel to The Brothers Karamazov, Sharov’s ninth and last novel The Kingdom of Agamemnon is a clear-eyed reckoning with the legacies of Stalinist state terror set in twenty-first century Moscow. When Gleb, a young historian, embarks on a quest to recover a lost manuscript by fictional theologian and Gulag convict Nikolai Zhestovsky, his search leads him to a nursing home where he interviews Zhestovsky’s daughter Galina. Calling herself Electra, Galina peels back the curtain to her family’s complex history, weaving a tale of vengeance and terror to reveal a world where the line between victims and perpetrators are hopelessly blurred. A fast-paced thriller, full of leaps in time, unexpected historical parallels, and keen psychological insights, The Kingdom of Agamemnon is an intricate meditation on memory, culture, complicity, and the lures of narrative.