This article discusses the philosophical semi-documentary novel In Memory of Memoryby Maria Stepanova (2017). The narrative about the past can be interpreted as astrategy of dealing with the dominant retro-utopian sentiments in Russian society.The history of several generations of Stepanova’s own family is depicted against thebackdrop of tragic twentieth-century Russian upheavals which are transformed intoa meta-novel focusing on the workings of memory and ways of articulating it. Thearticle identifies two strategies used in Stepanova’s novel to counter retro-utopianism.The first strategy is the choice of a hybrid genre – documentary fiction – to recountthe events of family and national history. The second strategy relies on the conceptof memory as a catalogue used to complete the ’work of grief’ in Russian literatureand to help it escape its fixation on the past. These strategies in Stepanova’s novelappear to be closely connected with her reception of W.G. Sebald’s (1944-2001) works,in particular his documentary fiction