Ginster is a war novel about not going to war; about how war, far from the front, comes to warp every aspect of outer and inner life and to infect the workings of language itself. The subject is World War I, but this novel by the brilliant twentieth-century sociologist, journalist, and film critic Siegfried Kracauer, first published in 1928, has as much to say about what it means to live under...

Three by Tsvetaeva collects three dazzling and devastating reckonings with love and the end of love by a poet celebrated for the unequaled verbal inventiveness and emotional intensity of her work. ‘Backstreets,’ translated into English for the first time, is a retelling of a Russian fairy tale that offers a witches’ brew of temptation, bodily transformation, marriage, and murder. ‘Poem of the...

An Ordinary Youth is a novel drawn directly from the author's boyhood in Nazi Germany. Nine-year-old Walter's family is moving house when the novel opens, but Walter's main concerns are his tin soldiers and his older brother’s jazz records, his father’s fluctuating moods, and his mother’s ministrations and anxieties. While Walter is absorbed by his private life, the extraordinary accumulation...

Everyone knows that Nick and Charlie love their nearly inseparable life together. But soon Nick will be leaving for university, and Charlie, a year younger, will be left behind. Everyone's asking if they're staying together, which is a stupid question... or at least that's what Nick and Charlie assume at first. As the time to say goodbye gets inevitably closer, both Nick and Charlie start to...

Charlie zdecydowanie zbyt wczesnie doswiadcza okrucienstw losu. Ukochany ojciec popelnia samobójstwo, a dziewczynka nie znajduje oparcia w pograzonej w zalobie i niemocy matce. Zostaje sama z lekiem i bólem, z ciezarem nie do udzwigniecia. Ucieka w glab siebie, milknie i wraz z uplywem lat staje sie calkowicie samotna, smutna dziewczyna.

KRÓL MUSI UMRZEC. TYLKO JAK ZABIC NIESMIERTELNEGO? Królestwo Yusanu cierpi pod rzadami króla-boga, Joona. Mozni bogaca sie ponad miare, biedni cierpia glód i niewole. Czara goryczy juz dawno sie przelala. Piatka nieznajomych odpowiada na wezwanie. Sa wsród nich najemnik szukajacy odkupienia, zabójczyni walczaca o wolnosc, ksiaze wygnany za dawne zbrodnie. Kazde z nich jest smiertelnie...

In the early 1920s, the poet and prose writer Konstantin Vaginov was a member of Gumilev’s ‘Guild of Poets,’ followed by stints in the literary groups ‘The Islanders’ and ‘The Ring of Poets,’ and eventually the poetry section of OBERIU. He authored four books of remarkable poetry and four novels; the first of these—*Goat Song*—earned Vaginov a reputation as a subtle, witty, and highly...

This collection brings together plays by Mikhail Bulgakov that were not published during the author's lifetime. The action of *Flight* unfolds against the backdrop of the Civil War; it is a drama depicting the anguish and plight of the Russian émigré community. *Ivan Vasilievich* is a spirited comedy that later served as the basis for the screenplay of the beloved film *Ivan Vasilievich Changes...

*A Story of a Life: Books 1–3* introduces the reader to the most crucial stages of the author’s biography—childhood, youth, and early adulthood—set against the backdrop of the country’s rapidly changing history. – In *Distant Years*, Paustovsky portrays the world of his childhood: family, nature, early travels, and the impressions that shaped the future writer’s character. *Restless Youth*...