The Senility of Vladimir P.

Starred review from May 9, 2016
In Honig’s scathing, dexterous debut, set about two decades in the future, former Russian president Vladimir Putin spends his final days in the throes of dementia at a dacha outside Moscow. Everyone in the dictator’s waning sphere of influence—the estate’s quarrelsome chef, the drivers in the car pool, the security detail, the conniving new housekeeper—schemes to benefit from Putin’s vast, ill-gotten wealth. “They were all the same, every single person in the dacha,” Putin’s longtime caretaker, Sheremetev, muses as he considers his own enigmatic honesty, which led indirectly to his wife’s death several years before and his eventual estrangement from his son, Vasily. “The only thing they cared about was how long the feast would go on, like fish gorging themselves on a whale’s flesh, even while the whale was still alive.” When Sheremetev receives news that his nephew has been jailed for speaking out against the current regime, he desperately wants to help the young man avoid a lengthy prison sentence. But the corruption at the heart of the Russian kleptocracy runs deeper than even Sheremetev—a rank amateur in such matters—can imagine. In a novel reminiscent of the meticulous visual art of a Robert Altman ensemble film, Honig, a former surgeon who lives in England, showcases a keen eye for characters and set pieces and a pitch-perfect ear for satire. The flawed, naive Sheremetev, caught in the push and pull of his own outmoded beliefs, is at the center of this scintillating work of social commentary.

June 15, 2016
Honig's debut novel explores the development and deterioration of Vladimir Putin's mind and morals.Set in Russia a few decades in the future, Honig's novel introduces Nikolai Ilyich Sheremetev, the 24-hour nurse caring for the dementia-ridden former president. Sheremetev has lived his life as an honest man. However, when trouble in the family strikes and his nephew, Pasha, is arrested, Sheremetev mulls over the stakes of maintaining his high morals. While pondering how he might get his nephew out of jail, he learns that the entire staff at the dacha is greedily grabbing at dirty money. As time runs out both for Pasha's release from jail and Putin's moments of lucidity, Sheremetev wades his way through moral purgatory. Honig quietly and carefully crafts a tale about truth through time. Putin's hallucinations are seamlessly intertwined with the present-tense narrative, braiding the past into the ex-president's increasingly altered state of mind. Without justifying his autocratic brand of leadership, Honig humanizes Putin. "It was a terrible thing, dementia, a disease that struck at the very thing that made a person who he was." However, what's left of Putin oscillates between being a son fondly recalling his mother, a madman fighting the disembodied head of a Chechen, and the power-hungry politician he grew up to be. "The reason I was put in this place was to bring order to Russia..." he explains to a long-dead friend. His motives remain murky at best. "With one hand, I gave Russia order, and with the other I took for myself. It's a fair trade." Goroviev, a former journalist-turned-gardener, asks a pivotal question: "You wonder, a man who tells such lies...in the end, does he even know the truth himself?" Without any answers, Sheremetev is left to weigh the consequences of stealing from the biggest thief in Russia. Though Honig is a little heavy-handed with rhetorical questions, his study of what remains of a person once time takes its toll on the body and mind is a stunning take on the development of the corrupt and the corrupted. A surprisingly touching investigation of motive, duty, and greed.

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