He gave guest lectures on Russian history, literature and culture at international universities such as Harvard, Lexington VA, Cologne, Rome, Zurich as well as Oxford and Cambridge.

Anna Aslanyan for The Independent noted: “if Russian history is indeed a commentary to the Bible, then Before and During is an audacious attempt to shine a mystical light on it, an unusual take on the twentieth century’s apocalypse that leaves the reader to look for their own explications.”[3] Caryl Emerson wrote that in Sharov's novels “historical reality, in all its irreversible awfulness, is for a moment scrambled, eroticized, permitted impossible juxtapositions and illuminated by hilarious monologues of the dead."

His characters "do not make eye contact, but rather talk into the cosmic void.”[4] Rachel Polonsky for The New York Review of Books stated that “the clarity and directness of Sharov’s prose – wonderfully rendered by Oliver Ready – are disconcerting, almost hallucinatory.

‘How did I get here?’ Is a question his reader will likely ask again and again.”[5] The Los Angeles Review of Books praised the work of the translator: "Oliver Ready hears and renders into English many stylistic registers, reminding us that Sharov began creative life as a poet.

If it is true ― and I believe it is ― that translation requires the most intimate dialogue possible with another’s consciousness, then Sharov’s rebirth into English in such staggeringly fine prose is the perfect tribute to commemorate the departure of his mortal body.