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 has translated several books from the Russian, including Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, short fiction by Nikolai Gogol and Yuri Buida, and three earlier novels by Vladimir Sharov. A selection of Sharov's essays, translated and edited with Caryl Emerson, is forthcoming in 2027. He teaches Russian at St Edmund Hall, 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.