Haunting, terrifying and hilarious, The Day of the Oprichnik is a dazzling novel and a fierce critique of life in the New Russia

Moscow 2028: Andrei Danilovich Komiaga, oprichnik, member of the czar's inner circle of trusted courtiers, rouses himself from a drunken stupor and prepares for another day of debauchery, violence, terror and beauty. In this New Russia, futuristic technology combine with the draconian world of Ivan the Terrible to create a dystopia chillingly akin to reality. Over the twenty-four-hour span of the novel, Komiaga will rape, pillage and torture, in the name of the czar he fears and adores. Shimmering with invention, fierce social commentary and razor-sharp wit, Day of the Oprichnik imagines a near future too disturbing to contemplate and too close to reality to ignore.

Vladimir Sorokin (born 1955) is the author of eleven novels, including The Blizzard, also published as a Penguin Modern Classic, The Ice Trilogy andThe Queue. His works have been translated into thirty languages and won many prizes, including the Andrei Bely Prize and the Maxim Gorky Prize. In 2013 he was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize. He lives in Moscow.