A Prague Night, Pavel Pepperstein's metaphysical novel, takes place on Walpurgis Night, the ancient Central European spring festival when winter is ceremoniously brought to its end through the celebration and re-enactment of myth. Ilya Korolenko, a hired assassin, a top-flight killer who shoots from any distance and never misses, is in Prague to hunt down and kill the disgraced oligarch Orlov. Korolenko is a romantic, nostalgic for an idealised Russia of the past, who despises the corruption, greed, and idolisation of wealth that western capitalism has brought to his country. Having made his kill in the cathedral of St Vitus, Korolenko heads to a conference on Prague Spring and 1968. There he meets the seductive and radical Ellie Warbis, daughter of Americans whose lifestyle she hates, who proposes sex as brotherhood and sisterhood in the struggle for freedom. Together they attend a party thrown by her wealthy tycoon father, which proves to be a gateway to the wild festivities and transformations of the night of the witches...
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Born in Moscow in 1966, Pavel Pepperstein is one of the most influential artists of Russia's new generation. In the 1980s he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In 1987 he co-founded the experimental group of artists, Inspection Medical Hermeneutics, which, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, developed a critical approach towards the influence of western culture on Russia. Pepperstein represented Russia at the Venice Biennial in 2009. He participated in the Moscow Biennial in 2007, and the Valencia Biennial in 2003. He has had numerous solo exhibitions. Pepperstein's work is included in many public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Kunsthaus Zug, Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland, Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Sammlung Rheingold Art Foundation, Düsseldorf, and the Deutsche Bank Collection, Berlin.