Rehearsals

Vladimir Sharov (1952–2018) — a writer and historian, author of cult novels «Before and During», «The Resurrection of Lazarus», «Be Like Children», «Old Girl», «Return to Egypt», «The Kingdom of Agamemnon». Laureate of the «Russian Booker» and «Big Book» awards. In «Rehearsals» — as always under Sharov’s pen — Russian history, fused with biblical plots, acquires completely fantastic features: 17th-century Moscow becomes the Promised Land, in New Jerusalem Patriarch Nikon and the captured French director conduct rehearsals for the Second Coming, and the people assigned roles repeatedly play out events from the Gospel in anticipation of Christ, passing on roles from generation to generation until the mid-20th century… "Vladimir Sharov was the main Russian writer. In every aspect, he was the main one, and in every way Russian — in his relationship with language, in his powerful historical thinking, in his impeccable sense of the disappearance of truth and the exposure of truth. Every one of his novels was an event for me. Today I particularly remember how my classmates and I, in the baptismal frosts of 1999, went to New Jerusalem, stopped on some snow-covered hill, and read “Rehearsals” aloud while looking at the monastery. It was a pilgrimage of readers to that place, which Patriarch Nikon did not make sacred, but Sharov made a place of miracle… This ecstatic and desolate feeling of the presence of miracle was, for me personally, the backdrop for reading each of Sharov's books. He taught — very gently, always kindly, and with a sly smile in his beard — that the miracle exists, but as soon as we begin, according to Russian custom, to build huts on miracles, it turns into something else. That ancient history never disappears but surrounds us like a grove. That all times are one eternity, and in its night sky, the quiet snow of the Second Great Flood slowly swirls, and in the ark is warmth." Alexander Gavrilov