Haunted Empire

Haunted Empire is an outstanding contribution to nineteenth-century studies that brings the 'Gothic turn' to the fore and illuminates hitherto unexamined aspects of Russia's imperial experience.

(The Russian Review)

Valeria Sobol's closely researched, absorbingly written monograph turns a long-awaited Gothic lens on Russian and Ukrainian literature of the Romantic era.

(Slavonic and East European Review)

Timely, concise, and brilliant. Sobol's lucid and fluid prose ably traverses a host of conceptual frames and disciplinary fields. A necessary reading for Slavists, comparatists, and historians alike. Akin to finding a brittle old map of the Russian imperial consciousness with striking twenty-first century resonance.

(Slavic Review)

Valeria Sobol's book applies a colonial lens to analyze gothic motives in the Russian-language literature of the nineteenth century....While the English gothic has been studied from a postcolonial perspective, Haunted Empire pioneers this approach in the Russian imperial context.

(Ab Imperio)