Never before have Dmitry Gromov and Oleg Ladyzhensky written documentary prose - only fiction. We never kept diaries. But the invasion of Ukraine changed everything. These diaries are not the fantasy that Oldie is used to. A different language, a different style - to match the circumstances.

From the flamboyant and unpredictable Maryska, who scandalises the town when she cuts short her golden tresses, to the eccentric Uncle Pepin, who always has to have a ready supply of furniture to smash when he's angry, Bohumil Hrabal creates a range of enchanting and memorable characters - confirming his status as one of Europe's greatest writers.

Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine's Grey Zone, the no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has been dragging on for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a rival from his schooldays. With little food and no...

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In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of the Communist party rule, the regime's control over scientific information, and its emphasis on economic...

‘The novel ‘The Kukotsky Case’ takes place in the forties and sixties: the end of the Stalinist era, the defeat of genetics, the death of a tyrant, the thaw, the first jazzmen. Against the backdrop of all these events is the life of Pavel Alekseevich Kukotsky, a brilliant doctor endowed with the gift of ‘inner vision.’ Physicality and , it would seem, the crudest physiology (here the author is...

'Legends of Arbat' is a collection of incredibly funny and dizzying stories from the Soviet and recent past. Ruthless truth and folk mythology form a brilliant alloy and explosive mixture.