The Tamesis
The opening line of Svetlana Sachkova’s debut English novel, undeadsees protagonist Maya — a modest woman in her 30s making her directorial debut with a horror film — eating delicious figs. “[It] It felt like pure happiness that made her forget, at least temporarily, that life was full of disappointments and dirty tricks,” Sachkova wrote.
This delicate balance between contentment and foreboding, tranquility and chaos, characterizes the rest of the novel. undead— airing Jan. 13 from Melville House — follows Maya’s personal and political journey as her film unintentionally stoked the wrath of Vladimir Putin’s repressive government in the years after Russia invaded Crimea. Maya’s initial indifference to the suppression of dissent among politicians and creatives reflected a sentiment prevalent in Russia’s early days: She viewed incidents of repression as an anomaly rather than the norm, and could not at first imagine that her film—in which Lenin’s resurrected mummy attempts to take control of Moscow in a zombie apocalypse style—could be considered controversial by the Russian state.
Part art novel, part thriller, and deeply rooted in psychological realism, undeadDedicated to political prisoner Alexei Navalny and other victims of Putin’s regime, it explores what it means to be an artist in a country slowly moving from authoritarianism to totalitarianism and toward a second Cold War.
A journalist and author who gave up a long career at Russia’s Condé Nast to rebuild her life in the United States, Sachkova tried to embrace her Russian sensibilities while also making her ideas accessible to American readers. She has previously attempted to translate parts of her novel into English teeth While taking classes at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. but where teeth— the story of a Russian dentist raising two daughters alone — got an enthusiastic response from agents, but they ultimately struggled to find a place in the United States.
Translation experience teeth prompting Sachkova to write her next novel, undeadin English. The mindset this process put her into was attractive. “When I first started writing in English, I felt like a completely different person,” Sachkova said. “Your whole mentality changes with the words in your head.” By then, Russia had invaded Ukraine; a crackdown on dissent intensified; and independent news outlets were shuttered as Putin barred people from criticizing the war effort.
