The Undead: A Novel of Modern Russia

by Svetlana Satchkova

In this gripping tale of contemporary Russia, a young filmmaker and her friends run afoul of a government that ruthlessly oppresses artists who dare to satirize the regime ...

When Maya, a young Russian filmmaker, makes a low-budget horror movie with her friends, it seems like a promising start to a career in indie film. Little does she know that her jokey lo-fi film will soon attract the attention of the autocratic censors at the highest levels of the Russian police state.

What follows is a propulsive narrative of an artist being crushed by state power, and the choices that one makes within a system where free expression is literally illegal. Written with the undeniable voice of a emigre from Putin's Russia, The Undead is a tense, piercing story that serves as a parable, and a warning, about political oppression.

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Contemporary

304 pages, Paperback

Published January 13, 2026

Reviews

[Janine]

Exceptional novel about the results of “artistic repression, authoritarianism and the dangerous myth that ordinary people can remain neutral or safe through willful ignorance.” Set in Russia, the book could easily be set in current America. This is a cautionary tale especially worthy of a read.

Maya Kova is fulfilling a life long dream to direct her own movie. It’s a low budget quirky horror film - named The Undead - using Lenin as part of the horror story not taking into account that the powers that be would see this as blasphemous. Maya is having such a great time directing her film she’s bit cognizant of dark forces around her. And Maya is a Russian patriot- she views Moscow as better than New York where her friend, Lena, is moving, describing the beauty of Moscow subways to rat-infested New York ones. This view is destroyed when agents come to her apartment and she’s charged with crimes against the state. The trial is a chair-gripping read. The reality of her new world is incomprehensible to Maya. Who raised accusations against Maya is less important than how the state can crush its citizens and bend them to their will if they want to live.

This is a riveting story. Maya has never been political so her quandary dumbfounds her as would anyone in her shoes. But as this story reminds us ignorance in the face of tyranny is no defense. Maya is a sympathetic character; she isn’t cruel or manipulative - the first part of the book that develops her character shows her for her simplicity and the normal wants and desires of anyone. The fight for freedom is not done through ignorance but raising voices in awareness which Maya had forgotten like many believing if it doesn’t affect me I don’t need to worry.

In the acknowledgements, the author notes Maya’s story is partly based on the lives of film director and poet Evgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petrychuk. These women were charged in 2023 for writing a play about women forced to marry Syrian jihadists.

I gave this book five stars for its topic - political repression is rife today and should not be ignored - for its message - ignoring repression isn’t going to make it go away and for the enjoyment I got from reading this book.

Highly recommend!

[Andrei Muchnik]

Propulsive and well written, Satchkova’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary Russia.

[Harry Van]

The book is dedicated to Russian political prisoners, and especially to Alexey Navalny. This dedication leaves no ambiguity about the political intent of the novel.

The story focuses on the moral questions that arise when living in the shifting reality of a dictatorial system in which absolute arbitrariness is the norm, and in which truth, lies, guilt, and innocence are concepts whose meaning is determined moment by moment according to whatever is most convenient for the regime. If you want to avoid ending up in a penal colony, what options remain for making your own moral choices? Or must the penal colony be the price you must be willing to pay?

The most disurbing impression the novel leaves is that,no matter your moral choices, the impenetrable forces of 'the system' ultimately decides if you are a 'good citizen'or an enemy of the state.

The Undead is not only a gripping, well-crafted read, but also highly relevant in an era where the appeal of authoritarian leaders and illiberal political systems seems to be alarmingly on the rise

[Lisa]

The Undead: A Novel of Modern Russia presents Putin's Russia in a mordantly moral tale of caution for Western readers. In a newly opulent Moscow, characters often must mortgage the modern conveniences and luxuries of their lifestyles by choosing complacency or compliance with the state's oppressive apparatus.

With the propulsion of a whodunnit, Satchkova serves up a cast of characters who are as amusing as they are flawed. Satchkova makes fair game of expectations and entices the reader with intrigue and red herrings.

Maya, the protagonist in The Undead, focuses primarily on her film career and thus turns a blind eye to a system that is becoming increasingly dangerous and omnipresent. She is convinced her apolitical posture will be her shield.

The parallels to life in MAGA's America are chilling, making The Undead an essential read.

[Ekaterina Kryuckova]

This is a novel less about plot and more about a certain feeling you gradually find yourself in.
At first, it almost reads as ironic — a story about a young filmmaker. But quite quickly, that feeling shifts into something more absurd, where the rules stop making sense and reality itself becomes unstable. At some point, it stops being funny and starts to feel unsettling.
To me, it’s a very precise depiction of how pressure from a system works, not directly, but through a gradual shifting of boundaries. It also shows how art becomes vulnerable in that space, yet still remains a way to capture and name what’s happening.
I wouldn’t call it a casual read, but you slip into its details almost without noticing, which really speaks to how skillfully the narrative is constructed

[Michele Hierholzer]

The Undead is a brilliant takedown of totalitarian Russia's often lethal reach into all walks of daily life, cloaked in a brightly entertaining tale of Maya, an independent woman who wants to make great films. Like Russia's pervasive network of hidden but ever-watchful eyes, Satchkova's very clever story is the sheep's designer clothing draped over the insatiable wicked wolf. Russia is a very dangerous place, despite the heavily gilded world of luxurious restaurants, humming cafes, glittering Metro stations and all-night bars. It's no spoiler that Maya's desire to create meaningful and important films in the great tradition of Russian cinema will not go as expected or planned. As the net descends and tightens, her every move becomes a greater struggle for survival -- and for confronting what survival really means, or can mean. Are our choices really choices? Are we making them ourselves, or simply reacting to the options we have been dealt? Recognizing the dark truth about totalitarianism, not just in Russia, is the story, and it's told by a master of intelligent entertainment. I can't wait to read Svetlana Satchkova's next book!

[miriam]

I really enjoyed The Undead - a suspenseful, unsettling novel set in Moscow that is also a powerful cautionary tale. It’s a timely reminder that staying apolitical offers no protection in an authoritarian society. A system that suppresses free speech and demands conformity can eventually silence anyone, even those who believe they can remain safely on the sidelines - turning everyone into the living dead. I can’t wait to read more from this author.

[Wes]

The core story is compelling: a debut filmmaker runs up against state power and is brought to heel. I think it's important to tell this kind of story—especially now, especially in the United States—so while the author's writing style didn't quite gel for me, I did finish the book and am grateful to her for putting it out there.

On writing style, I struggled with the narrative, which has a breathless, superficial quality to it throughout. It provides so many details and so many names but doesn't stick with most of those details long enough to give them much meaning, leaving the scenes feeling incomplete, lacking depth. After finishing the book, I read that the author is a journalist by training and that the plot is based on actual events, which together probably explain a lot of the narrative choices that make this feel not quite like a typical novel. But I think the story could have been sharper and more affecting with a bit of pruning and an occasional slowing from its breakneck pace so that salient moments could have more time to breathe.

[Eliza Phillips]

This was a solid middle-of-the-road read for me. Satchkova definitely knows how to set a scene, and her descriptions of Moscow are vivid and gritty. I liked the look into the "glamour" industry and how fake it all is, which felt very grounded in reality. That said, it’s a pretty bleak book. If you’re looking for a plot-driven page-turner, this isn't it. It’s more of a character study. I’d recommend it to people who like literary fiction and don't mind a story that's a bit of a "downer," but for the casual reader, it might feel a little too slow and cynical.

[Kate Connell]

Maya has become a later in life student again, as she embarks on her film school journey in her early 40s. She’s lucky enough to get financing for her first feature film and has enough contacts from film school to cast and make the movie. However, once finished it seems doomed to be shelved, until one morning when the police come to Maya’s apartment and claim the film is a negative portrayal of Putin and his reign. Maya, who has actively avoided making political statements in her art, is appalled. Is it possible to make apolitical art? And what can one do when there is no way to prove their lack of intention?

I recommend this to people interested in how art functions and is created in situations like this, and those who may want a fictional look into existence in such a regime.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC of this novel.

[Sienna]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE IF YOU THINK IT’S OKAY TO NOT BE INVOLVED IN POLITICS READ THIS!!!

[Olga Zilberbourg]

A story of an aspiring Moscow filmmaker, Maya Kotova, who makes an arthouse horror movie as a commentary on the fragility of human nature, and then finds herself arrested and prosecuted because her movie is deemed a threat to the Russian government. In Moscow circa 2017, during the era of the Kirill Serebrennikov trial, there is no longer room for apolitical art. Satchkova, who had just ended her career in film journalism at the time when her novel is set, beautifully captures the sense of an extravagant party mixed with paranoia gripping Moscow’s film industry at the time.

Read an excerpt from this wonderful novel on PuncturedLines.com:
https://puncturedlines.com/2026/06/17...

[Mark Kingsley]

Svetlana Satchkova captures the collision of two anxieties: the struggle of a filmmaker attempting to bring their perfect idea into a reality populated by imperfect actors, producers and crew; and the corrupt whims of today’s Russian state. Throughout, the politics of an artistic community and the politics of authoritarianism come to mirror each other as conditions only navigable with supplication, appeasement and compromise.

A hard-hitting and perceptive novel.

[Elaine]

A recent film graduate puts together a low budget zombie film only to be accused of political sabotage. The Russian gov't views her little project as a smear campaign against Putin and his regime and she faces interrogation and imprisonment when all she wanted was a life free of politics.

[Robert Goodman]

Svetlana Satchkova’s first novel in English, The Undead is a strange amalgam. It is part farce, part political commentary, part reflection on the life of an artist in an authoritarian regime and then part Kafka. Set in Russia, it follows the tribulations of a woman who just wants to stay out of politics and make the best arthouse zombie movie that she can, but finds that in Putin’s Russia, everything is political.
When The Undead opens Maya, a woman in her late thirties and a former entertainment journalist has decided to follow her life dream and become a movie director. Following a couple of student films she pitches a script for a horror film to a local producer. In the film Lenin is brought back from the dead and leads an army of zombies that need to be stopped. The production process itself is a well observed comedy of errors and competing egos. But it is when the authorities get wind of the film and decide that it has political overtones that Maya’s troubles really begin.
The Undead is clearly positioned as a commentary on Putin’s Russia. On the ways in which, in an authoritarian regime, art is used to as an instrument of state power. And artists can either get with the program, fight the system and end up in jail or leave. When the book opens, Maya prides herself as being non-political but this just makes her naïve and unprepared for the interpretation that could be put on her work. Maya herself observes at one point – if she knew she was making a political allegory she could have made the film so much better.
While The Undead has a very specific Moscown setting and is, at times, very Russian, the observations that Satchkova makes about these types of regimes are universal and could, if you squint, apply as much to other, similar global regimes with observations like this:
[Maya had] thought so much in recent months about how authoritarians thrived on their subjects’ moral paralysis, how passivity in the face of evil helped cement their power… Every step of the way [people] made a choice not to ask for trouble.
The Undead is sometimes hard to read. Maya is a bit of a hapless character who has little self belief and, as noted, starts out as very naïve (although that changes over the course of the story). But she is also, for that reason, also very believable and relatable. She avoids conflict, she makes relationship mistakes, she pushes herself too hard. And Maya comes from a reasonably middle-class strata of Russian society so is generally cushioned. But then Maya becomes a victim of the State and Satchkova is keen to explore the impact of that on someone like her.
The Undead is overall a fascinating debut. Satchkova digs deep into the relationship between the current Russian regime and the art scene through a flawed but relatable protagonist in what is a sometimes satirical, sometimes scary and always cautionary tale.

[Avrelia]

It has come to my attention that quite a lot of people know nothing about Russia. It is quite all right, I myself know very little about a great many places. And I can’t even say I know all that is to know about Russia – I haven’t lived there in this century, after all.

Yet I often encounter such fantastic notions about Russia and people who live there, that I cannot stop rolling my eyes. There is no Iron Curtain – now, so far, as of today when I am writing it, and a lot of information and stories are available.

If people do want to know more about Russia – and specifically life about ten years ago in Moscow, I have just the right book for them.

The story follows Maya, a single Russian woman in Moscow, who in her mid-thirties decided to change her career and become a director and a screenwriter. She took an industry course, she wrote a screenplay and secured funding for her horror feature film about zombies.

After then the filming started and mess ensued.

What could be less political then zombies? Maya thought. Well, she didn’t think about politics at all. Politics is a dirty word, and it is better to leave for someone who has nothing better to do. She had her art, her movie, her creative dreams.

But even though Maya is as apolitical as can be, the reality is catching up with her pretty fast. And it is not pretty.

I won’t spoil the rest. But for me, there was no spoilers and no surprises in this book. Everything felt so damn familiar. I knew these people. Either personally, or through online friendships, or I read about them. I knew how the story goes, because even though it is fiction, it is happening in our world, not a fictional one. And this timeline brings us, well, here. Everything that seemed absurd and fantastical to me twenty-five years ago, now is reality. I wish we made interstellar travel real instead, but we live in the stupidest timeline, and this book is a true mirror to it – a certain time and place.

Is it a fun book? On occasion. Is it a sad book? From time to time. Is it an emotionally wrenching book? Definitely. There is a poetry in its mix of absurdist hilarity and horror found in mundane life of Moscow, in the bitter honesty, in the regrets and hopes, and small victories among big defeats, and I wish more people read it.

[Mark]

Everything is new in Russia. And everything stays the same. Czar Nicholas before. Czar Lenin after. Czar Putin now. In Svetlana Satchkova’s hilariously serious book, Maya, a Horror Movie Director, resurrects the mummy of Lenin. Only in the movie she shoots, of course, but that’s enough to get her in trouble. She’s accused of having the undead Lenin as a stand-in for Putin! FSB has imagination. And they are not afraid to show it.

As Ivan Rubin, a film expert, asked to provide an artistic examination of Maya’s movie, says: “…the intended message of this film, its underlying metaphor. There is no doubt that its depiction of Lenin and the group of zombies under his command is a thinly veiled commentary on contemporary political figures. By conflating historical figures with current political personalities, the film misses an opportunity to engage in nuanced social commentary. Despite this allegorical approach feeling heavy-handed and lacking in subtlety, this movie is dangerous due to its implicit suggestion for viewers to overthrow the government, symbolically represented by Lenin and his zombie followers.”

[Ann Gorewitz]

This fascinating and thrilling novel opens with Maya, a thirty-something, single woman, preparing to make her first professional film – a horror film about zoomies and a first for any female director. Life is good.

The reader like Maya learns about the film-making process – script writing, hiring, choosing locations, publicity, and the infighting that occurs. All is going well with high hopes of it being positively received when the unexpected happens. She hears whispers of what was occurring to other people but thought it could not happen to her. She wasn’t political and rarely kept up to date on what was going on in Russia as Putin became more and more powerful.

All of sudden it’s affecting her big time, and her life is destroyed without her ever knowing who complained about her to authorities. There’s no proof of her disloyalty, but it doesn’t matter.

This novel is a must read for Americans as President Trump becomes more and more like Putin. Once halfway through the book, I could not put it down until I finished reading. It kept me on the edge of my seat.

[Sam Ashurst]

If Kafka was Russian and had access to Netflix, he might write something like The Undead, which is full of the horrors of bureaucracy, propaganda, and the dangers of artistic naivety. Instead, this is journalist Svetlana Satchkova's first book in English, and it's a pretty amazing debut.

Modern critical commentators will send you a TikTok telling you there’s no such thing as an apolitical horror film, but Undead’s lead, Maya, hasn’t got the memo. She thinks she can make a movie featuring a zombie Lenin in Putin’s Russia, and receive a 10-minute standing ovation in Cannes, as opposed to a five year stint in Siberia.

As brilliant a fly-on-the-wall look at low-budget filmmaking as it is a bug-in-the-phone take on State spies, The Undead is a fast-paced, tense read, with a great protagonist who has a memorable supporting cast. Very highly recommended.

[Laura Martin]

Probly more like 2.5. The overall story is interesting and there's a good pace. It's a classic example of a journalist writing a novel though. A lot of it is overwritten though, with the author over-explaining and focusing a lot more on the background of Russian politics at times than is needed for the character story to move forward (at times it felt like it probly should have just been a non-fiction book). The characters and relationships are pretty one dimensional and I couldn't say I was invested in any of them, and often felt pretty unrealistic (not the court part, more the film-related stuff). A good story but with poor, over simplistic syntax and writing.

And the last sentence made me mad, just why? It also didn't make much sense with the trajectory of that relationship.

[Julian Tepper]

This is a fascinating novel -- and an often frightening one -- about a Russian filmmaker whose first feature is deemed to be, generally speaking, against the State. (No spoilers but it is a dark tale.) I didn't know much about the Russian film world and I enjoyed how the author gives a full, detailed portrait of that scene. The characters are often comic, and the rise and fall of the protagonist, an aspiring artist in her mid-30s, is deftly and unsparingly told. The author has made a great statement about Russia, Putin, and the terror imposed on artists, journalists and truly anyone in this time. Highly recommend and I can't wait to see what comes next for this author.

[Anastasya]

"It’s been two weeks since I finished reading Svetlana Satchkova’s The Undead, and the novel continues to haunt me. Not just because of its supernatural element—though the supernatural sits at its core in the form of a horror film about Lenin, the dead Soviet leader, coming back to life to lead an army of ghouls—but because the pages capture the terrifying reality of living in an increasingly totalitarian state. ..."

I was captivated by this book and reviewed it for The Rumpus. If you'd like, you can read the full review here: https://therumpus.net/2026/04/01/in-t...

[Sasha Vasilyuk]

Contemporary Moscow, pre-Ukraine invasion. Maya is a young, naive filmmaker with a cool idea to make a zombie satire. She is dealing with jealous colleagues, guy attention, an obsessive ex, but the movie is humming along until one fine day there is a knock on the door and things go very, Very Wrong.

The author clearly knows the film industry intimately and a lot of the shocking twists and turns are actually based on real things that have been happening in Russia. THE UNDEAD is an exciting, page-turner of a commentary on what happens with art in a place with rising authoritarianism.

[Wendy Fairey]

Among the myriad pleasures of this smart, sophisticated unrelentingly engaging novel is the subtlety of both storyline and characters. One can perhaps anticipate the trajectory of a young filmmaker in Putin’s Russia from “innocence” to “experience,” but Maya’s nuanced story leads us to reflect on the choices and accommodations that all of us make, whatever our politics or country. A truly excellent and most timely book!

[Dmitry M]

Svetlana Satchkova’s first novel written in English is quite remarkable. She writes with surgical precision and impressive control. As a reader, I could feel that she knows her characters inside and out, and cares deeply about what happens to them - both within the plot and in the reality that inspired it. Although the book is fiction, it is based on current events in Russia, where tyranny devours artists, free speech, and even those who do not dare to protest.

[Evan Rausch]

Fast paced, at times funny and at times terrifying. As an American reader, it was fascinating to read about modern Russia. The streets, the restaurants, the descriptions were so evocative I felt like I was there, but also felt implicated in the story as a result! Some clear (and unfortunate) political parallels to the rest of the world these days. But despite the heavy topic, a very fun read

[Paula Bomer]

I loved this novel! Ir's a moving examination of the meaning of home, the horror of a dictatorship, the joy of movie making and one woman's political coming of age in Putin's Russia. Important reading!

[Doreen]

2/22/2026 Solidly thoughtful and entertaining, and probably a pretty necessary read for anyone who thinks "it can't happen here." Full review tk at CriminalElement.com.

[Alex M]

An engaging, vivid, and prescient political novel set in Modern Russia about an aspiring filmmaker's debut gone completely wrong. Reads quickly and, despite the heavy subject matter, is also very funny throughout. An impressive first novel from a young author to watch!

[Yana]

Stayed up way too late two nights in a row because I simply couldn’t put it down.
The kind of book that pulls you into a world that feels both absurd and terrifyingly familiar. Dark, funny, and deeply unsettling in the best way.
A stunning read.