The stories are illustrated by the famous artist Oleg Kominarets, who skillfully, vividly and reliably conveyed the coloring of the writer's immortal works.

Coming from a provincial working-class family, Platonov wholeheartedly accepted the October Revolution, and the more interesting is the fact that his works convey with unprecedented force a personal ideological tragedy, unusually clearly expressed in ‘The Pit.’ The very idea of building a ‘Common Proletarian House’ turns ‘The Pit’ into a dystopia that is shocking in its power, where the details...

Bored already? Then read this book! It: - is not a play in verse, but a play in verse and comics (which is a devilish difference); - clarifies the subtleties and nuances of a bygone culture - for example, why the play was considered scandalous (how could a young man stay in a girl's room until the morning?!); - tells about the life, everyday life and customs of the high Moscow society of the...

Set in a topsy-turvy world like a holiday revel, this comedy devises a romantic plot around separated twins, misplaced passions, and mistaken identity. Juxtaposed to it is the satirical story of a self-deluded steward who dreams of becoming ‘Count Malvolio’ only to receive his comeuppance at the hands of the merrymakers he wishes to suppress. The two plots combine to create a farce touched with...

Schlump, written by Hans Herbert Grimm, was published anonymously in 1928 and was one of the first German novels to describe World War I in all its horror and absurdity, and it remains one of the best. What really sets it apart is its remarkable central character. Who is Schlump? A bit of a rascal and a bit of a sweetheart, a victim of his times, an inveterate survivor, maybe even a new type of...

Chess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig's final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942. It is the only story in which Zweig looks at Nazism, and he does so with characteristic emphasis on the psychological.

The plot of Hrabal's novel takes place during World War II, when human qualities manifest themselves just as they do in times of deep peace, only they are more visible in the confrontation with the events of war. The author tells the story of a young student, Miloš Hrma, who, despite his love problems, reaches the threshold of manhood at a small railway station...

The theme of Hrabal's famous prose is the life of Jan Dítet, a waiter, later a hotelier and finally a traveler during a time of political upheaval. It is a book about Czechness, the greatness and ugliness within us, which was made into a film by Jirí Menzel in 2006.

A worker at a waste paper collection center, Hanta, has worked at a printing press for thirty-five years. He rescues rare books from piles of paper, reads them, and is thus 'educated against his will.' The novella Too Noisy Solitude is Hanta’s inner monologue with many recurring motifs. The reader gets to know Hanta’s first love, Mancinka, and the gypsy Ilonka, who disappeared in a...

The Good Soldier Švejk is one of the most famous and popular characters not only in Czech but also in world literature. This is evidenced by the fact that, along with numerous editions at home and abroad, the work has become a classic in the true sense of the word, which is constantly read and quoted. Perhaps we could also talk about a part of our national character, whether in a good or...

The War with the Newts develops over a long period of time as a collage of newspaper clippings and other brilliantly parodied records about the miraculous Newts who learn to speak, work, and behave like humans, only lacking the ability to think creatively. Behind the seemingly entertaining and witty satire on newspaper sensationalism, what Capek considered the greatest danger to human...