Viktor Pelevin’s new novel, “The Return of Bluebeard,” will be published on April 23, the publisher Eksmo announced.

The story revolves around the high-profile Jeffrey Epstein case, the announcement said. Pelevin will reveal the secret of Bluebeard’s sinister island and show how Epstein became Epstein.

The new book’s plot is unconnected to the Transhumanism Inc. series, which has already produced five novels.

Eksmo provided the following synopsis:

Gilles de Rais — companion of Joan of Arc, Marshal of France — and a bloody serial killer. The Roman emperor Tiberius — a contemporary of Jesus Christ — and one of history’s most notorious libertines.

What do they have to do with Epstein’s island?

What is reincarnation, really? Are we responsible for what was done in past lives? Was it truly us?

Who is Jeffrey Epstein, and what were his guests actually doing there? What is the role of the secret society “Pink Sunset” and its mediums?

A new investigation by Konstantin Golgosky tears the veil from the secrets of the sinister island and exposes the monstrous moral collapse of the global elite from a radically new angle. But it is also a perilous descent into the depths of one’s own soul…

The secrets of pyramid robbers, the wrath of Egyptian gods, the atrocities of left-wing activists and the crimes of crowned libertines, the mysteries of quantum leaps into the past…

As a bonus — a most valuable practical skill: how to overcome an irresistible temptation or a deeply ingrained bad habit? People knew this 3,000 years ago, but have long since forgotten.

We, however, remember.

The novel will be available in bookstores and on online marketplaces, as well as in audio and e-book formats through Yandex Books (by subscription) and LitRes.

This is the first time in many years that a Pelevin novel will be released in spring rather than fall, Eksmo noted.

Pelevin’s last novel, “A Sinistra,” was published in September 2025. It is the fifth book in a series set in the Transhumanism Inc. universe. The previous installment in the series was published a year earlier, in October 2024.