Day of the Oprichnik: A Novel

Violent and possibly exaggerated depiction of Russian state enforcers, but seems possible when you look at the care and concern Russian government demonstrates for its subjects. No wonder Putin banned it.

Well, you don't expect a dream to have a plot, do you? The protagonist rapes and murders regularly throughout the day, which is a duty of his high government position. There are diversions into novel drug use and the paranormal. Work and Word! Suppression of vile Western influence keeps our hero busy. A page turner. Sex and violence served up with heaps of hate and imagination - really without letup.

I decided to read this book because it was mentioned in the Economist as a work that aptly describes today’s Russia. I’m sure much is lost in translation. It was just too weird for my taste. It’s basically about a group of thugs who are convinced they are the good guys on a mission to save Russia from evildoers, who happen to be just about everybody else. It’s worth reading, but it is definitely not enjoyable, which I doubt was the author’s intent anyway.

This book being sold digitally ultimately assists the reader in navigating the sometimes obtuse references and sometimes overlong song prose of the book. Have a wikipedia reference handy, for the contemporary slang translated from Russian is much easier to understand than references to 16th century mideval castes and 9th century Othodox saints.Good- fully realized prose with a novel depiction of a cyberpunk future and perspective- Worldbuilding works well, but the condensed timeline of the backstory doesn't explain some things about how the dystopian future came to be at timesBad- Though the book is less than 300 pages long, each prosaic interlude drags on past being fun for the overall length of the book- Character development is chopped off, deliberately given the to a frame of the book, but ultimately the protagonist appears to neither rise above nor fail in the normal story sense- Somebody please re-translate the chinese, it's neither pinyin nor Wade-Giles and it just doesn't sound like the words the book claims it is

Having recently finished reading Russian originals of both The Blizzard and Day of the Oprichnik, I decided to go through respective English translations out of sheer curiosity. I must say that as long as the translation of the Day of the Oprichnik is concerned I am not extremely satisfied with the result of Jamey Gambrell's work. Granted, the Russian original presents numerous challenges, but hitting home with some of the terms (mobilov, Mercedov - really inventive matches to what author uses in the original), she sometimes misses on more common phraseologisms. And what really got me to snap out of my general serene laziness and write this review is a following blunder:“What will happen to Russia?” She doesn’t answer, but looks at me carefully. I wait with trepidation . “It’ll be all right.” I bow, touching the stone floor with my right hand. And I leave.A literally translation from the original goes something like "With Russia, there will be nothing." Although indeed, Russian "nothing" can be translated as "all right", in this particular context it has a more direct meaning too, and Sorokin's phrase carries the connotation of a gloomy Zen saying, a word play which is lost in translation.But maybe I am indeed a bit too peeky. I must say that even since I started reading English translations of Russian authors, trying to find a fitting translation of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which I could recommend to an American friend, I have not so far found a work that would fully satisfy me. At the same time, truth be told, I think that Jamey Gambrell did a much better work with Sorokon's The Blizzard. A good translation, a solid read in it's own right.

What are we reading?: Day of the Oprichnik, by Vladimir Sorokin (translated by Jamey Gambrell).Give me the short version: Ritual, torture, lust. Politics of deadly bent. Starting hungover, alternate future oprichnik Danilovich jams more into his day than most could take in a week.There’s a lot going on in this novel, for its relatively modest length. Lovers of history, sociology and politics will all find fascinations to plunge into, but don’t baulk if none of that fires your blood. I just picked it up ‘cause I like Russia.Day of the Oprichnik is wide open and enjoyable to anyone curious, from any background … although possibly not for faint hearts, unbending sensibilities or queasy stomachs. More suited to adventurous minds, keen to wander off the beaten track and question everything they know, let alone read. If you like doubling-up it’d make a great companion piece to Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.Invariably this is a world you’re left wanting to know more about, but Day of the Oprichnik is a perfectly balanced piece and really didn’t need to be a sentence longer. If like me you cracked the pages unfamiliar with the ins and outs of Russian history, do take the time to read up on the brutal real-life historical oprichninaMy favourite bit: His Majesty’s father, the late Nikolai Platonovich, had a good idea: liquidate all the foreign supermarkets and replace them with Russian kiosks. And put two types of each thing in every kiosk, so the people have a choice. A wise decision, profound. Because our God-bearing people should choose from two things, not from three or thirty-nine. Choosing one of two creates spiritual calm, people are imbued with certainty in the future, superfluous fuss and bother is avoided, and consequently – everyone is satisfied.

I had recently read an article about Vladimir Sorokin in view of his opposition to the war in Ukraine. The article mentioned his idiosyncratic view of Russian society. He was described as one of the most controversial figures of the contemporary Russian literary scene, an author that shocks because of his overt use of obscene and gratuitously violent descriptions in his books. In the light of the brazen acts of savagery, sexual and otherwise, committed in the Ukraine by a brutalised Russian soldiery, I felt the need to discover this author.In the novel written in 2006, but set in Moscow in 2028, such violent behaviour by the modern Oprichniks, is justified by the unwavering loyalty to the modern Tsar, the abiding love for Holy Rus and the need to extirpate violently all its enemies. The brutal comradeship of the select few, agents of the Tsar whimsical will, alludes to the brotherhood of the FSB and the Kremlin cronies; a privileged stratum corrupt and cruel, contemptuous of the ordinary people and envious of the Oligarchs, the modern Boyars. The author has captured this recurrent and deeply violent character of Russian history, since the time of Ivan the Terrible. His farcical allegory, transports us into the not too distant future of a modern Russia in awe of Chinese technology, walled off from the “corrupt West” and dependent on its exports of gas to enrich the Tsar and his close entourage. A system, as described in the novel, based on paranoia and arbitrary brutality with the blessing of an ultranationalist Orthodox Church. Sorokin has written a dark satire in the tradition of Nikolai Gogol and Mikhaïl Bulgakov, with graphic descriptions of horrible violence. Good Literature can deepen our understanding of history and the dynamics of society, as well as the motives of the powerful few. An author to watch with interest.

What an amazing work. It comes from a rich Russian traditon of satire, and is comparable to Bulgakov's The Master and Margerita. Given that it was written all the way back in 2006, the author has predicted the future almost perfectly. The Oprichniks in question are modern versions of a type of corrupt and brutal over-seer from the middle ages. They 'police' the state on behalf of the king, imposing strict morals on the citizenry whilst debauching themselves in private. Their corruption - physical and moral - is limitless. To have written this even in the relatively early days of Putin's rule was courageous and it was - sadly - a near-perfect prediction of the Russia we see in 2023.

A hard read, it takes the idea of Putin's imperial ideals and love of Stalin to the limit and draws back to terror of Ivan and the dog head oprichnik but in a closed modern society where no tech mixes with a society based in the C16th

Fascinating book. Really different from anything else I have read. I couldn't put it down.

a pageturner finished it in one day