What do you think?
Rate this book
The Undead: A Novel of Modern Russia
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.
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.
- GenresFiction
304 pages, Paperback
Published January 13, 2026
10 people are currently reading
121 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 29, 2026
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.
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.
January 22, 2026
Propulsive and well written, Satchkova’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary Russia.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
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.
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.
October 24, 2025
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.”
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.”
September 7, 2025
What begins as a glittering escape from an early midlife crisis, an almost-romantic-comedy plunge into the glamorous, bohemian world of filmmaking, soon collides with something far darker. Eternal Russian tyranny looms not as a spectacle but as an ever-present, undead force. It is felt more than seen, a cold, visceral presence that can turn any life into a Kafkaesque, Orwellian nightmare. Politics does not wait for consent -- it claims you, whether you notice it or not. In such a world, no one is innocent, no one is safe. Every character, inevitably, is confronted with a stark choice: to drift into zombified compliance, or to insist on their humanity.
The author’s language is exacting, precise, unflinching. Modern Moscow comes alive with vivid clarity, and the recognizable figures and events of the film industry lend the story a quiet but insistent authenticity. This book demands attention from readers who think and observe, who understand that literature can illuminate not just the world of a story but the world we inhabit.
The author’s language is exacting, precise, unflinching. Modern Moscow comes alive with vivid clarity, and the recognizable figures and events of the film industry lend the story a quiet but insistent authenticity. This book demands attention from readers who think and observe, who understand that literature can illuminate not just the world of a story but the world we inhabit.
Review of advance copy received from Author
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.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
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.
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.
February 3, 2026
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.
September 25, 2025
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.
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.
February 3, 2026
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!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews