The Undead

The English-language debut by Russian-born author Satchkova, who now lives in the U.S., chillingly examines the Russian government’s stranglehold on the arts and media industries. After Maya Kotova leaves a successful career in magazine publishing in her mid-30s to attend Russia’s best film school, she achieves near overnight success when her first feature film, a satirical horror movie about a zombie Lenin, is picked up by a production company. Unlike her fellow film school graduates, Maya is avowedly apolitical, willfully turning her back on the mounting atrocities committed by Putin’s regime in the mid-2010s. So when she’s accused by authorities of incorporating subversive messages into her film, Maya is incredulous. Later, when activist groups laud her case as a free speech cause célèbre, she feels like an imposter: “She wasn’t the brave artist they wanted her to be, the one suffering for her sharp, uncompromising vision.” Some ostensibly humorous elements—Maya’s romantic foibles and professional jealousies—fail to fully land, but her fraught relationships with fellow filmmakers adds to the novel’s bleakly ironic conclusion. Throughout, Satchkova sustains an ominous vibe in her depiction of authoritarianism. It’s a convincing cautionary tale of the dangers of political apathy. (Jan.)