The Rehearsals

By: Vladimir Sharov

Narrated by: Al Bernstein

Seventeenth century Russia, New Jerusalem Monastery. The recently deposed Patriarch Nikon, whose reforms lead to a schism in the Orthodox church, employs a French dramatist to stage the New Testament and hasten the Second Coming of Christ. Jacques de Sertan’s troupe consists of untrained and illiterate peasants. The actors are divided into roles, whole families play different social or ethnic groups that lived in Jerusalem around the time of Christ. No one, however, is allowed to play the Messiah.

The preparations take years and are interrupted when consequences of the schism catch up to Nikon. Everyone is arrested and forced into exile. Despite all the hardship, the rehearsals continue for years even after the deaths of the original actors with children inheriting their parents’ roles...

The Rehearsals is a stunning reflection on Russian history of ideas, national identity, art, literature and religion.

©2018 Vladimir Sharov via Wiedling Literary Agency / Copyright for the English translation Oliver Ready (P)2019 Heraclon Publishing Canada

Bizarre pronunciation and misreading of sentences

Let me be clear that the book itself is brilliant. I teach it and was hoping to recommend the audiobook because my students have to read many pages in a short amount of time. It brings me no joy to report that I can’t recommend this audiobook to my students without warning them about its significant shortcomings. The reader has a generally pleasant reading voice. But, for example, the reader struggles mightily with the names of all the main characters, butchers proper nouns (calls the Holy Sepulchre, the Holy SePOOlkray!, it is SEpulker), and tends to use a kind of pseudo-Italian accent for all non-English words, calling the main character Sertan variations of Serteeyan, occasionally calling Nikon “Nigh-kon” as in he rhymes it with “icon” when it NEEkon. I read along to take notes, and he sometimes omits critical words from sentences changing the text “against Christ, not with Him” to “against Christ, with Him.” In other words, it makes the sentence mean its opposite. His sentence intonation is often awkward. Declarative sentences come across sounding half like questions or sound like the end of a sentence is actually in the middle of an incomplete thought. Please hear me that this has nothing to do with snobbishness or proving knowledge. I very much want to recommend the audiobook, and it could be beneficial for me if done more professionally. Just take a moment to imagine a book about America in which George Washington was called different names, like Gayorgay WushINGtan, or the White House was called the “White Hose”… it’s distracting. I’ll be the first to admit that Russian and French names are challenging to pronounce, but for that reason, Audible needs to hire someone who can either consult the reader or hire someone who can pronounce the proper names consistently and correctly. That way, both Oliver Ready’s excellent translation and Sharov’s excellent novel can take center stage unhindered.