Vladimir Sharov

ELKOST Intl. literary agency handles world translation rights in Vladimir Sharov literary estate

Winner of the 2015 and 2018 Read Russia award
Winner of the 2015 GQ magazine award (Russia)
Winner of the 2014 Big Book award (third prize) (Russia)
Winner of the 2014 Russian Booker and Student Booker awards
Winner of the 2013 The Crown award (Russia)
Winner of the 2008 Book Of The Year award (Russia)
Winner of the 2008, 2002 and 1998 Znamya magazine award (Russia)

Vladimir Sharov (1952-2018) was a Russian novelist. Trained as a historian, Sharov turned to fiction only in the early 1980s, writing for a small circle of acquaintances, convinced that his works would never be published. Sharov's novels were met with controversy in the Russian literary world, especially the publication of Before and During, some critics rejected the philosophy and poetics of Sharov's prose, but all his novels were celebrated in Russia and received several Russian literary awards, including the Russian Booker Prize 2014 for Return to Egypt.

Sharov's works have been translated into several languages including Italian, French and English. The English translations of his novels were highly praised by critics. Anna Aslanyan for The Independent noted: “if Russian history is indeed a commentary to the Bible, then Before and During is an audacious attempt to shine a mystical light on it, an unusual take on the twentieth century’s apocalypse that leaves the reader to look for their own explications.” Caryl Emerson for the Times Literary Supplement wrote that Sharov's novels depict “historical reality, in all its irreversible awfulness, is for a moment scrambled, eroticized, permitted impossible juxtapositions and illuminated by hilarious monologues of the dead. Sharov’s characters do not make eye contact, but rather talk into the cosmic void.” Rachel Polonsky for The New York Review of Books stated that “the clarity and directness of Sharov’s prose are disconcerting, almost hallucinatory. His writing is at times funny, at times so piercingly moving, so brimful of unassuaged sorrow, that it causes a double-take. ‘How did I get here?’ Is a question his reader will likely ask again and again.”