⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Part-Gogol, part-Nabokov and thoroughly magnificent… Russian Gothic has been heralded as an early masterpiece of post-Soviet literature — a wonderfully, startlingly disconcerting read.
— Francesca Peacock, The Telegraph (5 out of 5 stars)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Russian Gothic is an exceptionally fascinating and accomplished novel that skillfully intertwines reality, dream, delirium and madness.
— Marnix Verplanke, Knack Focus (5 out of 5 stars)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
— Internazionale (5 out of 5 stars)

Russian Gothic is a powerfully airless, demented little book whose fever proceeds with unbearable lucidity, both of prose and of mind… A lambent portrait of madness.
— Boris Fishman, The New York Times

Readers won’t be able to turn away.
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A haunting masterpiece of jealousy and rage.
— Molly Odintz, CrimeReads 

Russian Gothic examines the devastating toll of PTSD, toxic jealousy, grief and misogyny. Aleksandr Skorobogatov is the author of five acclaimed novels but Russian Gothic, originally published in Europe in 1991, is the first of his books to be translated into English. It’s been hailed as a masterpiece of post-Soviet literature.
—Emily St. Martin, Los Angeles Daily News

A dark masterpiece.
— Femina Magazine

A grand Russian novel where the hero is a husband tortured by the demons of jealousy. With this beautiful tragic novel, Skorobogatov has carved a place for himself in the grand Russian tradition.
— Astrid de Larminat, Le Figaro

A Russian Edgar Allan Poe story, written in a sublime and breathtaking way.
— Lektuurgids

Russian Gothic joins the tradition of tales told from the perspective of unhinged narrators, from Gogol’s Diary of a Madman (1835) to Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991) (…) All the more chilling in light of the conscripts being sent en masse to fight in Ukraine (…) Skorobogatov’s complex psychological portrait is riveting.
— Mia Levitin, The Sunday Times

A short and grand novel about an obsessive jealousy which leads to madness, in the tradition of Gogol’s Diary of a Madman.
— Jean-Claude Vantroyen, Le Soir

This sinister, indeed sulphurous, novella by a Belarus-born author was first published in Russian in 1991, and won major awards. Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse’s English translation, as creepily compelling as the book deserves, appears long after the contemporary hook that Aleksandr Skorobogatov embeds in his tale has lost its topicality. Recent events, however, make this fable of obsession, madness and violence timelier than ever. (…) Admirers of Gogol, Dostoevsky and other literary conjurers of infernal powers, both psychological and social, will find plenty to recognise. (…) The anti-hero’s demonic possession, and the heroine’s long-suffering virtue, may unfold against a broad canvas of Russian writing, with its recurrent spiritual dramas, yet Nikolai also suffers alcohol-enhanced PTSD, bequeathed by the imperial debacles of the moribund Soviet state. His hallucinations have a history. And this English version arrives just as Putin’s war on Ukraine creates thousands more traumatised Nikolais. In his sermon from hell, Bertrand refers to life as ‘a never-ending battle in a never-ending war’. If so, then the Kremlin now hosts the most faithful devil’s disciple of them all.
— Boyd Tonkin, The Spectator

A pulse-pounding modern classic.
— Bent Van Looy, Culture Club Magazine

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A thrilling novel about guilt and atonement.
— Peter Swanborn, De Volkskrant (4 out of 5 stars)

The black, droll humour; the hyperbolic expression, both in dialogue and the author’s prose; the bold assumption that is the Russian writer’s job to take on profound truths about humanity’s successes and failures; the seamless switches from short no-nonsense exposition to grand sighs and world-weary cries. The proliferation of melodramatic exclamation marks! If this is the territory in which your own dark soul thrives (mine certainly does), Russian Gothic will be Prokofiev to your ears.
— Jane Graham, Big Issue

It has been many years since such an original work found its way from Russia to this country. Skorobogatov writes exceptionally well. I read Russian Gothic in one sitting, and after I had finished it, it continued to hold me in its grip. It is an impressive debut that whets the reader’s appetite for more to come.
— Helen Saelman, NRC Handelsblad

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Skorobogatov tells his tale from within the madness of his main character. What is truth and what is only taking place in the head of Nikolaj? The short, feverish chapters carry you away. Nikolaj is caught up in his jealousy and the reader is caught with him.
— i.a. Haarlems Dagblad, Leidsch Dagblad and Noordhollands Dagblad (4 out of 5 stars)

Skorobogatov intertwines sexual obsession, jealousy, fear, aggression and the drive to abandonment with one another, in a work that has strong undertones of the French writer-philosopher Georges Bataille; a dark book that plays with the tempting and at the same time repulsive connection between the erotic and violence, love and hate, reality and nightmare.
— Trouw

Russian Gothic is a breathtaking book, written in the sober prose that is necessary for writing a tale about the logic of madness.
— Dagblad van het Noorden

Timeless and worth all attention.
— Nederlands Dagbad

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ It’s as though an actor has stealthily entered your mind and mesmerizes you with his tale in a husky, smoke-filled voice. That’s how Russian Gothic reads, a surreal novel that strikes a balance between J. Bernlef and David Lynch.
— Karel-Willem Delrue, Cutting Edge (4 out of 5 stars)

Russian Gothic is a sober, subtle and at the same time raw and overwhelming novel that deserves to be read.
— MappaLibri

With Russian Gothic, Skorobogatov endeavors to write a book that could have been penned two hundred years ago and yet still remain relevant today. It’s a timeless work, richly imbued with the ailments of the Russian soul — alcoholism, violence, passions, faith, and patience — crafted in a mesmerizing way.
— Stavros Striligas, Popaganda

With haunting prose and a gripping gaze that skillfully avoids pity or melodrama, the Belarusian author crafts a terrifying atmosphere of suffocation. Aleksandr Skorobogatov combines nuanced discretion with rich literary skill to shape the swirling forces of a paranoid spirit. Literary giants such as Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Leonid Andreyev would surely take pride in the legacy they have influenced.
— Nikos Kourmoulis, Book Press

You do not emerge unscathed from Aleksandr Skorobogatov’s story. This concise novel resonates, as Kafka might have phrased it, like an ax cleaving the frozen sea within us. In Russian Gothic, Skorobogatov introduces a kind of literature rarely encountered among contemporary authors, a distinction that has rightfully earned him acclaim. While exploring a familiar theme, he elevates it through a spare narrative style teeming with succinct descriptions, a penetrating gaze, razor-sharp dialogues, and an enigmatic ambiance. Comparisons to Poe are not unfounded, as certain elements draw parallels to the American author, yet Skorobogatov maintains a distinctive, purely Russian essence.
—Vicky Vasilatou-Sarri, Ο ΑΝΑΓΝΩΣΤΗΣ

Skorobogatov is considered as one of the most interesting authors of post-communist Russia.
— De Standaard der Letteren

Aleksandr Skorobogatov is being praised in Moscow and in the West as an absolute discovery.
— De Morgen

Every now and then, albeit very rarely indeed, a novel or story by a totally unknown author gives a glimpse of unexpected genius. The surprise is so great, in fact, that you are compelled to read the work a second time, but now with the clear insight of the initiate. The novel Russian Gothic by the Russian writer Aleksandr Skorobogatov is one of these rare, truly impressive achievements.
— Gazet van Antwerpen

Unmatched, timeless mastery.
— Athens Voice

In the first place, Skorobogatov wrote a beautiful, almost classic study.
— Knack

While reading Russian Gothic I sometimes had to think back to Nikolay Gogol’s Diary of a Madman. In both, the story goes beautifully, deliriously off the rails, with or without religious connotations. So, Gogol and perhaps, in some of the nicely laconic and cruel details, a hint of Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird.
— De Morgen

Astounding literary debut.
— Gonzo Circus

The previous year, Russian Gothic received an important award, and the author became a rising star at the literary firmament.
— Gazet van Antwerpen

When you start reading Russian Gothic you understand why it won this prize. It is a fascinating story that immediately grabs you by the throat (and quite honestly, by other parts of your anatomy) and doesn’t let go. The style is very laconic and pointillistic without the clutter of unnecessary details. As in minimalist music, the recurring elements heighten the reader’s apprehension. And this makes the story extremely forceful. The author manages to captivate his reader with a story that is both malicious and voyeuristic. The reader almost becomes an accessory to the fatal ending.
— Het Laatste Nieuws

What he shows with this story is that decades of censorship and social-realistic literature are not sufficient to definitively exterminate individual strength of mind. There is still hope for the Russians.
— Algemeen Dagblad

A novel that reads as a terrifying vision and mystifies you as a David Lynch film. Great literature, great author.
— Focus Knack

This is absolutely unique in Russian literature in general, and especially so in recent years.
— Het Laatste Nieuws

This story would make an incredible film with an atmosphere worthy of a Polanski.
— Het Laatste Nieuws

This novel is in all respects one of the most astonishing books I have read.
— Gierik/NVT

Of Russian origin, Aleksandr Skorobogatov has written what could become a modern Horla.
— Page des Libraires

When we talk about wife abuse, we think straightaway about Afghanistan, Thailand, Somalia. But what about Russian women? Just Google “Russian women” and you will find that, like their Asian or African sisters, women from Russia and Eastern European countries in general are considered as docile objects to be manipulated. In his first novel translated into French, Aleksandr Skorobogatov describes the everyday life of Vera, who is married to a pathologically jealous alcoholic. The author describes the destructive feeling reinforced by alcohol with heart rending realism and brutality. (…) But behind this story of jealousy and a submissive woman lurks a critique of the Soviet era. (…) A rather detached novel, with poignant characters, that shows a small part of the Soviet reality rarely mentioned.
— Le Nouvel Observateur

Aleksandr Skorobogatov has set up a subtle immersion in his hero’s deliriums, leaving the reader a few short breaths of air from time to time. Just to touch the fragile frontier between the reality that escapes Nikolai and the images that he creates that shout out they are true. The narrative goes through the hero’s and the narrator’s hands, muddling their voices.
— Matricule des Anges

You read Skorobogatov in one befuddled breath.
— Nieuw Vlaams Tijdschrift

In short, Mr. Skorobogatov is a stellar talent, one to keep an eye out for.
— Het Laatste Nieuws

It would be a lot easier if his name was simply Smith or so, but this is unfortunately not the case: Aleksandr Skorobogatov is a name to remember.
— Gazet van Antwerpen

PRAISE FOR THE RACCOON BY ALEKSANDR SKOROBOGATOV

In the magisterial novel The Raccoon, Aleksandr Skorobogatov pleads for compassion for his antihero, who plods along like an everyman. When Skorobogatov talks about the raccoon, understand it as the everyman, constantly hitting his head against the wall and persevering despite all adversities. While The Raccoon is often very funny, filled with sharp remarks and hilarious scenes, the book carries a serious, even dark undertone. The Raccoon is a literary rollercoaster, the simplicity of its story inversely proportional to its stylistic ingenuity. Those swept up in the raccoon’s tragic and absurd journey will be richly rewarded. It just might be that the best Russian writer at the moment lives in Antwerp.
— Erik Ziarchyk, De Tijd

Hilarious, but also deeply moving story.
— Newsweek Belgium

Do not be misled by the hilarity. Fundamentally, this is a tragic story, but the author narrates it with a smile rather than a tear. A sublime work.
— Boekenbijlage

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ As a Flemish Bulgakov, the Belarusian writer Aleksandr Skorobogatov celebrates the festival of absurdism. The Raccoon symbolizes the everyman, perennially unfortunate, a brave soldier Švejk of the animal kingdom. He embodies everyday human feelings and desires, reads the newspaper, watches television, longs for love, and yearns for cinema in the big city to watch Charlie Chaplin films. Yet, simultaneously, he flies around the globe like a swimming, furry Icarus and lounges next to ‘Lord God’ in a beach chair on the sun. His fate is inextricably linked to his cap with a golden cockade, which he perpetually wears, found nailed subtly to the head of a dead train conductor thrown from the train by drunken pilgrims on their way to the Hajj. Speaking about absurdism.

In his brief chapters with titles like ‘The Raccoon Composes Himself and Asks the Father a Question’ or ‘Is it Possible that the Raccoon is an Immoral Womanizer?’, Skorobogatov continually brings references to classic Russian writers such as Tolstoy, Pushkin, and the fabulist Krylov. Yet he does not hesitate to mention Quentin Tarantino films or Superman, writing down every conceivable fantasy, sometimes tangential to the main narrative. Coupled with his rich style, pulling all linguistic registers, The Raccoon becomes not only an unforgettable and supremely witty adventure but also a touching ode to the everyman, who already has it hard enough in life.
— Michel Krielaars, NRC Handelsblad (4 out of 5 stars)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book is one of the best, if not the best book of this year.
— Nathalie B., Hebban (5 out of 5 stars)

This book may ostensibly be about a raccoon and serves as an ode to the tradition of animal fables and folk tales rich in Russian literature, but in reality, it is about us, about the fragile and small creature described in the opening sentence. The Raccoon is about what it means to be human, tormented by existence. It turns out that only humor of the absurd kind, akin to Daniil Kharms, offers solace from tears. Sharp and utterly unpredictable. A hilarious yet deeply moving tale.
— Marnix Verplanke, Knack Focus

PRAISE FOR COCAINE BY ALEKSANDR SKOROBOGATOV

AWARDS:

Cutting Edge Awards 2018: ‘Best Book International’
ELLE Belgium: ‘Author of the Month’
Literatuurplein: ‘Best Book of the Week’

RIGHTS SOLD:

Arabic, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Russian, Serbian, Spanish

Absolutely one of the most amazing books of 2017. Skorobogatov proves himself a worthy successor to surrealists such as André Breton. It’s irresistibly funny. From the dazzling opening pages, the story grabs you, and you won’t be able to put it down.
— Sonja de Jong, Noordhollands Dagblad

Cocaine is a must-read book.
— Eveline Janssens, Elle Belgium

In the manner of the Russian greats, Skorobogatov writes about inhuman pain and turns it into an absurd and burlesque theatre. This is a novel that is consistently unconventional, an experiment carried through to its radical conclusion, a novel you have to be prepared to open yourself up to. It is a celebration of the imagination. Skorobogatov is a gifted builder of sentences, as he already demonstrated with his breathtaking Portrait of an Unknown Girl. The self-mockery of the characters in Cocaine, in particular the figure of the author, is sharp as a knife. Doubt as the main engine of creativity, fully articulated. In this sense, this book goes much further than the so-called total theatre of Karl Ove Knausgård. Cocaine is, both literally and figuratively, a beautiful masked ball.
— Guus Bauer, TZUM / Literatuurplein

Skorobogatov’s startling talent as a writer leaves you speechless with admiration.
— Ellen de Jong, Baarnsche Courant

Readers who swooned over his wonderful Portrait of an Unknown Girl or raced through the pulse-pounding modern classic Russian Gothic won’t know what’s in store for them when they start reading Cocaine, the new novel by the Antwerp-based Russian writer Aleksandr Skorobogatov. Skorobogatov gloriously goes off the rails and bends every rule. Anyone who dares to board this surreal rollercoaster ride of a novel will find themselves tumbling and swaying ecstatically from screamingly funny formal experiments to hilarious political hot-button issues and pitch-dark fever dreams. Whoever manages to get off unscathed will never see the world in the same way again. Not for the faint of heart, but what a great book!
— Bent Van Looy, Culture Club Magazine

It is a book that reads like a feverish dream from which you wake up helpless with laughter. You don’t remember exactly what happened, you only know that it was exciting, quite absurd, and very funny. Months later, the images still haunt you. This book is a trip. An incredible, unforgettable trip.
—Romy Louise Lauwers, Deus Ex Machina

About each aspect of this novel (title, plot, style, meaning) you could easily write a paper, or a dissertation even.
— Hans van Willigenburg, ThePostOnline

With Cocaine, the author enthusiastically dives into the maelstrom of that voracious, unbridled Russian literature: a mix of a precipitous imagination, trenchant political criticism hidden behind “abstraction,” surrealism and frequently open and frank sarcasm.
In this tragihilarious novel, Skorobogatov plunges himself and his readers into the increasingly disturbed mind of an author, a figure that’s familiar and yet unknown to us: he could have just stepped out of The Brothers Karamazov, The Master and Margarita, or Gogol’s The Nose. Walking around in circles in his own mind, aided by a more or else constant intake of alcohol. And by characters that belong to the Russian equivalents of Brueghel and Bosch, dramatically clownesque, propelling themselves towards ever new precipices.
I love reading in bed, and I’m laughing out loud in bed with this silly, exuberant Russian Pallieter [the bawdy bon-vivant of a famous early 20th-century novel by Felix Timmermans], to the dismay of my bedfellow. What a treasure, literature like this, unrestrained, defiant, melancholy, in-your-face — and impossible to summarize neatly, but gloriously jolting and jarring, in search of the limits to the imagination of this exceptional writer — but you won’t find them in this book. Cocaine is a gift from Aleksandr Skorobogatov. Open it and snort away!
— René Hooyberghs, Gierik & NVT

Deliciously intricate and just as enthralling. As a reader you are constantly being misdirected, and the sheer improbability of the story exerts an irresistible pull. Cocaine is a dream like no other.
— Stefan Blommaert, VRT

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Cocaine is one big joke with, as befits a good joke, sharp edges and a bitter taste. A darkly absurd novel as it has been perfected by Russian literature. Skorobogatov pulls out all the stops in Cocaine; brilliant sentences go hand in hand with unrestrained rambling. Drunkenness, murder, fighting, incest: Skorobogatov goes all the way. Fortunately, we don’t have to take anything seriously. To wit: the scene in which a beautiful Swedish woman confesses that deep down she isn’t a woman but a chair.
There’s serious drama brewing in Cocaine: it’s about the impossibility of feeling at home, the impossibility of knowing the rules and regulations. How to live? For a ‘traveler’ — a euphemism for an emigrant — there are fewer toeholds in the stream of hallucinations that reality pretends to consist of. And that’s the best experience of reading this at times brilliant and at times lurid novel: what happens to you when the ground beneath your feet gives way, when you lose your family and loved ones, when the rabbit hole is flooded by a big wave. When everything is turned on its head, can incest be love? Can the dead come back to life? Can the pain of life cease when you become someone else? Can a book be read while the writer is still writing it? Well, why not?
— Maria Vlaar, De Standaard der Letteren (4 out of 5 stars)

Tripping is nothing compared to this rollercoaster ride of fevered images. A dazzling and uncompromising descent into the subconscious as only great Russian writers dare undertake it.
— Chris Ceustermans, Gierik & NVT

In a ceaseless, enjoyably crazy flow of hallucinations, this extravagant ode to artistry explores the limits of the imagination and the Russian absurdist tradition.
Experimentation is clearly central to Cocaine. All the way towards the border of sanity. This book shamelessly wants to move boundaries. My advice for how to savor this overwhelming satirical onslaught? Take a deep breath, pull out all the stops in your mind, and give yourself over to it entirely. Let yourself go, let yourself be swept along, like an uprooted tree in a tornado.
If you succeed in removing all those rusted dampers on your imagination (remember Coleridge’s ‘willing suspension of disbelief,’ and see also my earlier advice), then I guarantee boundless reading pleasure will be yours.
The writer as the conscience of society, as an unapproachable demiurge, as a safety-net and as a beacon. Skorobogatov aims high, mixes the burlesque with the tragic and gets away with it brilliantly. In this exuberant phantasmagoria with the technical ingeniousness of a Fabergé egg, nothing is what it seems and everything seems possible. Which, the way I see it, perfectly describes the literary imagination.
— Laudrent De Maertelaer, MappaLibri

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The novel’s flap copy places Cocaine within the best Russian tradition. Dostoevsky is never far away and, like Nabokov, Skorobogatov engages the reader in battle. But we can also place this novel in the tradition of Vonnegut, Heller or Joyce. Like them, Skorobogatov understands that reality cannot be captured in a simple, well-rounded story. With Cocaine, has Skorobogatov delivered his own Ulysses?
When, 100 years from now, this novel will be analyzed as a product of the times in which it was written, it will show a world both fragmented and fragmentary, but also rich and multi-faceted. Snort this literary Cocaine! It is a fever dream, a maelstrom, a disconcerting but exquisite kaleidoscope.
— Karel-Willem Delrue, Cutting Edge (4 out of 5 stars)

The trip undertaken by the protagonist of Cocaine is also a journey through world literature. The formal experimentation of Cocaine is reminiscent of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Sarah, neither man nor woman, but someone who feels like a chair and is looking for someone willing to take a seat on them, could have been thought up by a latter-day Gogol, and intellectually and emotionally, the Antwerp-based Russian author Aleksandr Skorobogatov seems to be a long-lost cousin of Beckett. Because that’s what this novel is really about: an existential fear and the unbridgeable gap between the artist and the world in which he lives.
— Marnix Verplanke, Knack Focus

PRAISE FOR PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN GIRL BY ALEKSANDR SKOROBOGATOV

AWARDS:

‘Best Book of the Year 2015’ by Literatuurplein (The Netherlands)
‘Best Book of the Year 2015’ by TZUM (The Netherlands)

RIGHTS SOLD:

Dutch, Spanish, Russian

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Aleksandr Skorobogatov has written a novel about the tragic first love between two teenagers in the Soviet Union of the seventies. He describes the thrill of that first time in a blistering way.
Your first great love never leaves you. Russian writers, masters of melancholy, often know how to beautifully give voice to it. Aleksandr Skorobogatov is a contemporary chronicler of that great feeling in his fifth novel Portrait of an unknown girl.
Skorobogatov describes it in long meandering sentences, a stylistic hallmark of his earlier books as well. For everything in this beautiful novel revolves around being in love, around physical desire, around enjoying each other’s beauty, around the first time they have sex when the parents aren’t at home. And so richly is it described that Skorobogatov carries you away and enchants you with his beautiful language.
— Michel Krielaars, NRC Handelsblad (4 out of 5 stars)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A literary gem.
— Karel-Willem Delrue, Cutting Edge (4 out of 5 stars)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Portrait of an Unknown Girl seems to continue seamlessly a Russian literary tradition in which great feelings are allowed to roam freely. Think of Turgenev’s First Love or a story by Ivan Bunin. Skorobogatov evokes such feelings in an exceptional fashion. His novel is witty where it needs to be, sensual where it wants to be, and subtle about the ‘precarious, sweet mixture of feelings that you want to rend asunder, but want to sustain even more.’
From the first page you’re aware that a refined stylist is wielding his pen. Quickly, you find yourself immersed knee-deep in this novel, which is full of melancholic, poised images and passionate sentences. Along the way, Skorobogatov skillfully conjures up the atmosphere of the crumbling Soviet empire in a far-off corner of Belarus ruled by alcoholism, boredom and petty fights. Skorobogatov’s richly varied prose adds a gentle glow to the whole. Portrait of an Unknown Girl is a real discovery.
— Dirk Leyman, De Morgen (4 out of 5 stars)

Aleksandr Skorobogatov is in every respect an heir to the Russian storytelling tradition. What writers like Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Gogol did over a century ago, he now does in a modern guise: giving shape to the Russian soul in lyrical language, in a story about love and revenge, opportunism and honor. The play with language takes primacy for Skorobogatov, and it’s a game he has mastered to perfection.
— Noord Hollands Dagblad

An epic composed with such subtlety that it deserves to be called a work of genius.
— Guus Bauer, Literatuurplein

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Skorobogatov turns out to be our own Belgian-Russian master storyteller.
— Feeling Magazine (4 out of 4 stars)

This novel, written in grand and restrained style, is exquisite.
— NBD Biblion

Stunning novel.
— TZUM

A book that captivated me from the beginning. I firmly believe that in Skorobogatov we encounter a great writer.
— Merwede Radio

PRAISE FOR EARTH WITHOUT WATER BY ALEKSANDR SKOROBOGATOV

RIGHTS SOLD:

Dutch, Russian 

It has been a long, very long time since I have read a novel that I could only tear myself away from after having turned the last page. Strong, sharp, dramatic and… bitter. A great book!
— Literaturnaya Rossia

Here is yet another in the string of successes from the ‘non-commercial’ series by Olma-Press, without any doubt ‘Category A literature’. I put the word ‘non-commercial’ between bashful inverted commas, because it contains the connotation of ‘not easy to read, not absorbing’. But Earth without Water is compelling, and sweeps you along like a whirlpool — somewhat in contradiction to the title.
— Ezhenedelny zhurnal

To say that Earth without Water can be read as a thriller does injustice to Aleksandr Skorobogatov’s work. Yes, this book sweeps you along from the first page to the last. Yes, it is well written, with a lot of irony and black humor, but it is also a story with many layers and a subtly hidden message. It is a hallucinatory image of today’s Russia, but the motives, passions and cowardice of the personages are universal.
— De Standaard der Letteren

In my opinion the best novel of last year was published in the series ‘Original’ of publishing house ‘Olma’. The leader I refer to is Earth without Water by Aleksandr Skorobogatov. Aleksandr Skorobogatov’s novel deals with the traditional themes of Russian literature, and in my opinion, he does it with the same refinement as his predecessors, thanks to whom Russian literature is considered great.
— Druzhba narodov

It is impossible to summarize Earth without Water without crucial losses. The plot is either serious action-noir, or action-noir with undertones of parody — a sort of Tarantinesque twist — or it is a myth. Its tone is elegiac and detached, as if the narrator just happens to find himself in the place where he had spent his childhood, while smoking and staring at the clouds. The genre of Earth without Water is indefinable. You can only read the novel without preconceived prejudice and predispositions. The impression is overwhelmingly strong.
— Novy Mir

Earth without Water by Aleksandr Skorobogatov is a ferociously absorbing novel.
— Druzhba narodov

Aleksandr Skorobogatov is an outstanding author.
— Znamya

PRAISE FOR AUDIENCE WITH THE SOVEREIGN  BY ALEKSANDR SKOROBOGATOV

RIGHTS SOLD:

Dutch, Russian

Audience with the Sovereign confirms his extraordinary talent, which already emerged from his debut, the novel Russian Gothic. It is one of the most wonderful literary works of recent times.
— Gazet van Antwerpen

A marvelous piece of work that combines the Great Russian traditions with the achievements of the modern European novel.
— Vrijzinnige lezer

Aleksandr Skorobogatov continues, in a modern and convincing way, the great literary tradition of the 19th century orthodox Russia of Dostoyevsky and Gogol.
— Gazet van Antwerpen