The grandson of Bundist revolutionaries from Ukraine, Vladimir Sharov (1952-2018) was born in Moscow to the physicist Anna Livanova and the journalist, children's author, and novelist Alexander Sharov. His parents' apartment became a meeting place for Gulag returnees, and the stories Sharov heard there as a child left enduring traces in his life and work. His nine novels, typically centering on the Revolution and the Stalinist era, seek the wellsprings of this period deep in Russia's past and in its official and unofficial spiritual traditions. The target of critical acrimony in the early post-Soviet years, Sharov had by the end of his life earned the reputation of a "living classic" and became the recipient of several belated awards, including the Russian Booker Prize. His most celebrated works include The Rehearsals and Before and During.

Oliver Ready's translations include Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for Penguin Classics and Gogol's And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon: Essential Stories (Pushkin Press). From contemporary Russian fiction, he has translated three novels by Vladimir Sharov-Before and During, The Rehearsals, and Be as Children-and two volumes by Yuri Buida (all published by Dedalus). He is completing a book about Nikolai Gogol, and teaches Russian at the University of Oxford.

Boris Belenkin is a writer, historian, and activist born in Moscow. Since 1988, he has been on the staff of the Russian human rights organization Memorial, and is the Executive Director of Memorial's Center for Scientific Information and Education. He lives in exile in the Czech Republic with his wife, Nina.