Interned with thousands of Polish officers in the Soviet prisoner-of-war camp at Starobielsk in September 1939, Jozef Czapski was one of a very small number to survive the massacre in the forest of Katyn´ in April 1940. Memories of Starobielsk portrays these doomed men, some with the detail of a finished portrait, others in vivid sketches that mingle intimacy with respect, as Czapski describes...

Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour: Memories of Soviet Russia traces Yelena Lembersky's childhood in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) in the 1970s and '80s. Her life is upended when her family decides to emigrate to America, but instead her mother is charged with a crime and unjustly incarcerated. Told in the dual points of view, this memoir is a clear-eyed look at the reality of life in the...

Lorenz Beckhardt, brought up in a Catholic boarding school, only found out as an adult that he was a Jew and that many of his relatives were victims of the Holocaust. He meticulously follows the history of his family -- from grandfather Fritz Beckhardt, the ardent patriot and World War II pilot, to the generation that after 1945 dared to make a new start in the country of the perpetrators....

Stefan Zweig, European and citizen of the world, cosmopolitan and pacifist, talks about his lost life, from his childhood and youth in Vienna to the time of the First World War and the 1930s, when the shadow of fascism lay over Europe. He describes how it once was and how it will never be again, in passionate, evocative prose. It is the story of an entire generation and a portrait of an epoch...

Wolfgang Fruehwald's sensational new edition of Ernst Toller's autobiography, which was awarded a prize by the magazine at that time and was published in hardcover by Reclam in 2011, opens up this important text with a detailed commentary that gives the reader the historical background of the pre-war period, the First World War and the Munich Soviet Republic as well as all appearing persons...

Oleg Sentsov is a Ukrainian film director, screenwriter and writer, public activist. Laureate of the Sakharov Prize 'For Freedom of Thought' and the National Prize of Ukraine named after T. Shevchenko. He was detained in Crimea in May 2014 and sentenced to 20 years in a Russian prison on charges of terrorism.

Stefan Zweig was enchanted with Mary Stuart, whose life he perceived as immensely paradoxical and from whom he perceived a ‘inexhaustible attraction of mystery.’ Thus, he investigated the queen of Scotland and Elizabeth I's fierce rival through the lens of a novelistic biography. Zweig is the undisputed master of this genre: he meticulously details the tumultuous life of this amazing woman, who...

The first, modern, post-Soviet biography of the scientist-encyclopedist and poet Mikhail Lomonosov, one of the main pillars of modern Russian culture. The author used not only archival materials and documents, but also the writings of Lomonosov's contemporaries to complete the picture of the man in the context of his time.

A revisionist look at Khrushchev and his denunciation of Stalin and Stalin's terror.

It's an almost unbelievable story. The author, who was only discovered in her eighties, became one of the most successful and translated Czech writers almost overnight. He won the State Prize for Literature for his short story collection Želary, and a highly successful film was made based on Joz Hanula''s novella, which was nominated for an Oscar. But who is Kveta Legátová (real name Vera...

In this groundbreaking memoir, Starobinets chronicles the devastating loss of her unborn son to a fatal birth defect. After her son’s death, Starobinets suffers from nightmares and panic attacks; the memoir describes her struggle to find sympathy, community, and psychological support for herself and her family. A finalist for the 2018 National Bestseller Prize, Look at Him ignited a firestorm...

In 1904, doctor Vikenty Veresaev was called up for military service, assigned to a mobile field hospital and sent to the east. He saw the battle on the Shah River, the Battle of Mukden and peace negotiations. From the first days, Veresaev plunged into the bloody chaos of military operations, witnessed the incompetence and indifference of commanders and officers, as well as the heroism of...