Not long after the war in Ukraine broke out in February, liberal institutions began to ban Russian musicians, writers, and artists as well as other cultural symbols seen as too close to the regime. Within this fractious climate, the role of a dissident writer — part of a belligerent nation but not complicit to its crimes — has taken on a renewed geopolitical significance on the European continent. Within this context, the Russian writer and author of some fifteen novels, as well as several plays and short stories, Vladimir Sorokin, has made a name for himself as a critic of both Soviet bureaucratic authoritarianism and the return to what he has interpreted as neo-tsarism under Vladimir Putin.

During the optimistic times of rapid economic growth in the early Putin years, Sorokin published the novel Day of the Oprichnik (2006). In it he imagined (or foreshadowed) an isolationist Russia, hiding behind a militarized wall and governed by tsarist absolutism. Within this regime, state-backed thugs beat up intellectuals and commit atrocities. The hardening of authoritarian expression in Russia over the last few years has turned the irreverent Sorokin into something of a prophet and cultural icon, celebrated as a fierce critic of his country’s worst tendencies.

Sorokin’s most recent offering to be translated into English, Telluria, consolidates this reputation as a prescient messenger of incoming dystopia. In it he turns his attention not simply to Russia but to Western Europe, embroiled in endless rounds of war and spiritually sick to the core. Sorokin’s prose isn’t for the fainthearted; Telluria is no exception. Obscenities, pedophiliac references, scatological digressions, convoluted and often unexplained lore, and fantastical characters are the norm. These are the ingredients of a typical Sorokinian feast.