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Point Zero
Throughout the whole of human history, people would kill each other in the name of God. They did not know that the God they fought for was the God of Power. The 11th century is known for two historical religious initiatives – the Crusades and Assassins of Syria. Since the 9/11 attacks, a new tragic era of terrorism began and spread from the US and all through Europe and Asia. The tragedy in Paris, France in November 2015 urged the writer to refer to the roots of religious extremism. In the first storyline of the novel Point Zero, the author pictures the start of the Crusades by Pope Urban II in 1095. The second story takes place in 1090 in Persia, where Hassan-i Sabbāh, an Ismaili missionary, establishes an extremist religious community and seizes a fortress of Alamut. The third story is set in present day Paris in November 2015 where a young French woman called Liz, and a young Arab man called Ali fall in love and are amazed at their differences, however, Ali’s traditional and religious family makes it complicated for them to be together.
The Monastery
The late 1920s... Convicted of murdering his father, Artiom Goriainov is serving a sentence of several years on the Solovki Archipelago. Artiom is a strong young man who survives all facets of the hell that is the Soviet camps: hunger, cold, betrayal, the death of friends, a failed escape attempt and a love affair. Unlike the many political prisoners at Solovki, he has no strong convictions. He is an everyman who, like the Virgil of Solovki, simply narrates what is happening in front of his eyes. His only motivation is to survive. Founded in the 15th century on an archipelago in the White Sea, from 1923 the monastery became a “camp of special designation,” the foundation stone of the Soviet GULAG system. The novel describes a period when Solovki was being converted from a re-education camp for “socially damaging elements” into what eventually became a mass labor camp. The notion of a Utopia for “forging new human beings,” complete with a library, athletic events, and research laboratories, eventually mutated into a hell of despotism and brutality. Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia
On the Road to Freedom
‘“Brother, you have another pair of boots,” Jaroslav Hašek said to me, grabbing me by the sleeve. “How do you know?” “Yesterday you were in army boots, and today you’ve got civilian ones on. I’d buy those army boots off you.” And in this way my high-laced boots, which I was given by the Austrian Red Cross way back in Beryozovka-za-Baikalom, came into Hašek’s possession. It was a silly thing to do. Not because I should have known that I wouldn’t get a kopeck out of Hašek in exchange for them — at bottom, I did know that — but as a former soldier, I should have thought about reserves. Life is a war and in this war, sometimes boots become casualties.’ Thus ruefull...
Robinson
Robinson is the first book by Aram Pachyan, which earned him the highest governmental award in Armenia, The Presidential Prize for Literature. The volume is made up of 16 short stories; each story is like a small but sharp painting of various characters. The faces in these paintings look very familiar, like someone you know, or someone hiding deep inside you. An inescapable loneliness of people in the modern world is the main topic of the stories by Pachyan. This book was published with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Armenia under the “Armenian Literature in Translation” Program.
The Vow
Can something that exists merely as a literary text, say a story, come about in real life? Can reality, to put it another way, steal something from literature, the same way literature steals from reality? Such is the question that Libor Hrach, the author of The Adventures of the Wise Badger, fields one evening over a hedonistic supper in a tony Brno restaurant from Kamil Modráček, himself a burrowing animal of sorts, in Jiří Kratochvil’s novel The Vow. ‘Quite simply, I said, everything that has been written either has already happened, or is about to. You write a story, and you can never be sure if what you’re writing isn’t actually taking place two streets away from where you si...
Khatyn
It is a quiet place, with lush green grass covering the location of the former Belarusian village. A village that was burned to the ground with its inhabitants in 1943. Anyone familiar with this small corner of Eastern Europe is chilled to the bone by the events that transpired there, and the village’s name Khatyn has now come to embody a horrific national tragedy. But tragedy is not all this name embodies, for it also reminds people of the tremendous courage of those who fought for the life and freedom of their country. It is the story of this village and the events that surround its annihilation that are the focus of Ales Adamovich’s novel Khatyn, which was written on the basis of hist...
Slavdom
‘Why do you whimper and wail, O Tatra streams and rivers, who carry your plaintive lament resounding to the sea?’ asks the narrator toward the end of The Slovaks, in Ancient Days, and Now. They respond: ‘Because our human compatriots do not join together in memory, as we our waters mix with our origin, and because their lives do not resound booming, but roll on unconsciously, like hidden streams, silently to the sea of the life of the nations, young man!’ This quotation from the most famous prose work of Ľudovít Štúr (1815 – 1856) might be set as a motto to the literary career of Slovakia’s greatest Romantic poet, publicist, and political activist. For all of Štúr’s writi...
The Code of Civilization
In his book, Vyacheslav Nikonov shows the origins of the modern world and traces the chronologies and histories of peoples and countries. Nikonov discusses the main centers of influence and forces that shape the world in which we live. The world demonstrates a variety of development models shaped by the national, regional, historical, religious and other aspects of each country. The center of gravity of world development is shifting from West to East, from North to South, from developed economies to developing ones. Thirty years ago, Western countries accounted for 80% of the world economy; now it is less than half. Asia, already home to most of humanity, will become a global leader in the coming decades. What does this mean? What will the world be like and what place will Russia take in it? Will American hegemony continue? Will China become a superpower? Will Europe become a museum for tourists from other continents? History has resumed its course and the world is rushing towards an unstoppable diversity. Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia.
The Nuremberg Trials
Postwar Nuremberg is set to host a historically unprecedented trial of the leaders of the defeated Third Reich. The whole world is awaiting a just verdict, but it is here where Soviet counterintelligence must wage a secret war against forces that seek to prevent that from happening at any cost. Nuremberg, having been nearly wiped from the face of the earth during the harsh fighting, becomes an arena for ruthless struggles in both hidden and overt operations. Nazis are still operating underground, spies weave their intrigues, politicians and diplomats make bargains, and movie stars dazzle the public. The enormous efforts led by the USSR’s chief prosecutor Roman Rudenko to expose the Nazi at...
An English Queen and Stalingrad
The author traces the Queen Mother’s formative years, her family life in the palace environment, her growing adoration and ascension to the British throne, how she arranged aid to Stalingrad and was ultimately named an honorary citizen of that city, and other little-known details from the life of the Queen and her circle. With a foreword by Yuri Fokin, Russia’s ambassador to the UK in the period 1997–2000, who was personally acquainted with the Queen Mother, the book will undoubtedly appeal to the British public and to anyone interested in Russian-British relations and the two countries’ World War II history. Illustrated with photographs from private collections and from the Battle of Stalingrad Museum, some of which readers will see for the first time. Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia.
