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A Book Without Photographs
Sergei Shargunov’s A Book Without Photographs follows the young journalist and activist through selected snapshots from different periods of his remarkable life. Through memories both sharp and vague, we see scenes from Shargunov’s Soviet childhood, his upbringing in the family of a priest; his experience of growing up during the fall of empire and studying journalism at Moscow State University; his trip to war-torn Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan during the revolution; his first steps towards a fledgling political career. The book reflects the vast social and cultural transformations that colour Russia's recent history and mirrors the experience of an entire generation of Russians whose lives and feelings are inextricably intertwined with the fate of their homeland. Shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize and a contender for The Big Book Award, A Book Without Photographs showcases the talents of one of the country’s brightest lights; a key player in a generation at the forefront of change in contemporary Russia.
Prisoner
A handful of families, several generations, more than a few wars. Moscow, Kabul, Barcelona. Anna Nemzer announces herself on the literary scene boldly and loudly with this debut novel about the insane, unspeakable nature of war, about human fears, treachery, lies, fateful coincidences and destinies during warfare, when there is no room left for love. The protagonists survived the war and are rescued from captivity. They are not able, however, to leave the experiences of the war behind them and move on with their lives. The novel explores what happens once the conflict is over, as they learn to live without the war, with all their loves, passions and weaknesses.
Gnedich
Maria Rybakova’s Gnedich captures the reader’s attention in its first stanzas with a striking allusion to Homeric Greece: “The rage that killed so many/the wretched rage of Achilles/who knew that he would perish/ that he would perish young. This is a novel-in-verse about the first Russian translator of the Iliad, the romantic poet and librarian Nikolai Gnedich (1784-1833). Since Gnedich spent almost his entire life translating Homer’s epic poem, Maria Rybakova has chosen verse as the most appropriate stylistic means in recreating his life. To the English-speaking world, this genre of poetic biography is best exemplified by Ruth Padel’s Darwin – A Life in Poems. Like the Iliad its...
Depeche Mode
In 1993, tragic turbulence takes over Ukraine in the post-communist spin-off. As if in somnambulism, Soviet war veterans and upstart businessmen listen to an American preacher of whose type there were plenty at the time in the post-Soviet territory. In Kharkiv, the young communist headquarters is now an advertising agency, and a youth radio station brings Western music, with Depeche Mode in the lead, into homes of ordinary people. In the middle of this craze three friends, an anti-Semitic Jew Dogg Pavlov, an unfortunate entrepreneur Vasia the Communist and the narrator Zhadan, nineteen years of age and unemployed, seek to find their old pal Sasha Carburetor to tell him that his step-father shot himself dead. Characters confront elements of their reality, and, tainted with traumatic survival fever, embark on a sad, dramatic and a bit grotesque adventure.
Moryak
Lee Mandel’s historical novel Moryak revolves around the story of Lieutenant Stephen Morrison, a naval officer sent by President Theodore Roosevelt on a top-secret mission in 1905. Morrison’s assignment is to work with British agent Sidney Reilly to kidnap Tsar Nicholas II and remove him from Russia before he can sabotage the upcoming Portsmouth Peace conference. The mission goes awry and Morrison is captured and sentenced to death. Through a quirk of fate, he is instead sent to the infamous Russian prison on Solovetsky Island. He soon catches the attention of the Bolshevik prisoners and their growing interactions come to have devastating effects on the evolving revolution in Russia, as well as the Allied war effort as the world descends into the chaos of World War I. As events unfold and secrets are unveiled in an uncanny political intrigue, Moryak in fact tells the life story of one man’s struggle for acceptance, him finding his place and finding himself.
Alpine Ballad
A handful of families, several generations, more than a few wars. MoscTowards the end of World War II, a Belarusian soldier and an Italian girl escape from a Nazi concentration camp. The soldier wonders if he should get rid of the girl; she is a burden and is slowing him down. However, he cannot bring himself to abandon her in the snowy wilderness. Somewhere along the way, the two develop feelings for each other, but their love is not destined to grow beyond the edge of the mountains. Yet their bond cannot be denied, and in the end it proves stronger than death itself. From the master of psychological narrative whose firsthand experience with World War II enabled him to re-create the ordeal ...
The Exile
Zinaida Tulub’s novel The Exile is one of the most brilliant works in the canon of fiction about Taras Shevchenko, the outstanding Ukrainian poet and artist. The idea of writing about Taras Shevchenko first occurred to her when she was in her thirties, during a period spent living in exile in Kazakhstan (1947-1956). Initially, Tulub worked on the screenplay for a film called Kobzar and Yakin, which can be seen as an early prototype for the novel. She was only able to start work on the latter after her return to Kiev in 1956, when she was granted access to archival material and memoirs. She completed the novel in 1962. Tulub’s primary goal in the novel was to celebrate Taras Shevchenko’...
The Investigator
The Investigator is set in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1950s. With Stalin at the helm, the post-war Soviet Union is struggling to rebuild and to heal the nation of its multiple wounds. Plots and conspiracies abound and challenges to socialist values, real and imagined, proliferate. A young woman is murdered in a typical Soviet town. In the spirit of the era everyone is a suspect. The investigator of the title sets out to solve the crime. A former intelligence officer who seeks to embody the ideals of the young Soviet Union, he introduces the reader to a polyphony of alternative voices that, together with his own, weave the unique fabric of this striking novel.
To Get Ukraine
Since Maidan in Kyiv and Russian presence in the Crimea, Ukraine has never been the same. In 2014, the country is deeply divided by the conflict imposed on the Ukrainians. But since nobody actually asked the nation, author Oleksandr Shyshko decided to take matters into his own hands and look for the answer to the ultimate question – who are the Ukrainians and what do they want. Shyshko spent his time researching the national identity of native Ukrainians, and as he went he stumbled on a discovery that led to yet another question – where is Ukraine going, the so-called Quo vadis? of the Ukrainian people. His findings and critical comments gave birth to this new book that is now for the first time being published in English. To Get Ukraine.
A Russian Story
He is young, intelligent, well educated, with patriotic sentiments. But certain misunderstandings oblige him to flee from Ukraine. For some reason, everything in his life builds up to a certain Russian scenario. So to what extent should one burden Ukrainians with the outcome of this Russian Story? Finding himself involuntarily identified with Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, the hero of the novel, Eugene Samarsky, becomes a 'superfluous man' in Ukraine. The novel by Eugenia Kononenko deals with love and the quest for one’s own identity, with the vaguely remembered circumstances rendering life nonsensical in Ukraine during the last years of the empire and the early years of independence. It considers the possibility of a mid-Atlantic meeting in today's globalised world.
