The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South German...

Based on previously sealed war archives and rare witness records of the survivors, Khatyn is a heart wrenching story of the people who fought for their lives under the Nazi occupation during World War II. Through the prism of the retrospect perception as narrated by the novel’s main character Flyora – a boy who matures during the war – author Ales Adamovich beholds genocide and horrific crimes...

Yuliia Iliukha's My Women, translated from Ukrainian by Hanna Leliv, is an urgent and poignant story collection of women confronted by the countless brutalities of war. It locates the voices and devastating experiences of those who have been silenced, those who have lost loved ones, those who have fought and persevered, and those who have broken down. Through poetic repetition, the nameless...

This haunting novel by the world's leading Tajik-language novelist is a time-twisting reverie on the bond between mothers and daughters. Growing up in late Soviet-era Uzbekistan, Mahtab feels more at home in the cotton field-and in the past, as depicted in her mother's diary-than at school, where the books in the library are rewritten with every new political trend. When a Russian film crew...

Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos—an unforgettably compelling masterpiece—tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans....

Gifted with an amazing instinct and a phenomenal memory, Agatha Mystery dreams of becoming a mystery writer. That’s for the future, though; for now, she is simply a brilliant sleuth! Together with her hapless cousin Larry—a student at detective school—she travels the globe solving the most baffling mysteries. Assisting them are a loyal butler, a cantankerous Siberian cat, and a host of...

– *The Story of a Life* is not a dry memoir but a major literary work in which a real-life biography transforms into a genuine novel. – Through the author’s recollections, the reader journeys from his pre-revolutionary childhood and school years to his early literary successes. The protagonist describes wars, relocations between cities, newspaper work, and encounters with the people who shaped...

*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*...

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...

In Hotel Exile, Jane Rogoyska evokes in novelistic prose the emotions, dilemmas, and fates of the hotel's patrons. In the 1930s, Europe's bohemian artists and political activists, forced to flee their homes when Hitler came to power, met at the Lutetia with the hope of forming an alternative government. But when war came, Paris was occupied, and the hotel became the headquarters of the German...

Death in Rome tells the story of four members of a German family—a former SS officer, a young man preparing for the priesthood, a composer, and a government administrator—reunited by chance in the decaying beauty of postwar Rome. A chilling account of Nazis after the war, here the older generation is resentful but not repentant. From the old unreconstructed Nazi officer Judejahn (the name has a...