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.

Yuli Gugolev is a translator and a winner of the Moskovskiy Schyot Prize and the Poetry Prize who has one of the most recognizable poetic voices in Russia now. ‘Orc Fields’ includes poems written after February 2022.

After the revolution and Civil War, the large Burliuk family became divided—some members left Soviet Russia forever, while others remained in their homeland. The same happened with the family and wide circle of friends of Sonia Delaunay. Despite the seemingly closed borders, correspondence between the two families continued for years. The main theme of these endless letters was the debate...

What has happened to Russia in the last thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union? How have events in the country developed? What factors have led to Russia becoming what it is today? What might Russia expect in the future? Often, an outside perspective allows for the consideration of different aspects, opens the possibility for a more multifaceted analysis, and helps to clarify the...

The Republic on the eve of partitions, a multicultural, multiethnic land closer to Istanbul than Paris and a man from nowhere who will change the fate of many thousands of people. A great journey from peasant cottages through magnate courts to imperial chambers.

A literary, imaginative ode to the borderland, not only geographical, physical, but in the broadest sense of the word... One of the most famous and most widely commented novels by Olga Tokarczuk.

France, 1685. The Sun King establishes Catholicism as the only legal religion. Huguenot groups cross the country to reach the north, where they hope to find a new homeland

In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. A product of a broken home, branded a ‘sissy’ by his dismissive Aunt Dottie, Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf. This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal,...

The hero of The Star Diaries, Ijon Tichy, like Gulliver, communes with various extraterrestrial beings. During his numerous interplanetary journeys, the traveler has met various alien civilizations, created by both sentient beings and advanced robots.

Yuri Andrukhovych is one of the most compelling and influential contemporary Ukranian writers, the author of a body of work that ranges from the novel to the essay to poetry and that stands out in every genre for being thoughtful, playful, free-spirited, and astonishingly new. His career took off in the waning years of the Soviet Union, when underground artists and writers and the rumbles of...

Maxim Osipov, who lives and practices medicine in a town ninety miles outside Moscow, is one of Russia's best-regarded writers. In the tradition of Anton Chekhov and William Carlos Williams, he draws on his experiences in medicine to craft stories of great subtlety and striking insight. Rich in comparison but devoid of cheap sentiment, Osipov's fiction presents a nuanced, collage-like portrait...

Vom Überfall Hitlers erfährt Aurelia Wyleyska im malerischen Südosten Polens. Während viele Menschen Warschau fluchtartig verlassen, kehrt die Schriftstellerin und Journalistin am 3. September 1939 dorthin zurück. Tag für Tag streift sie von nun an durch die besetzte Stadt und hält ihre Eindrücke fest, frei von Schwarz-Weiß-Denken, furchtlos und bildhaft: die Helme gefallener Soldaten, die...