It is no coincidence that the memory of crimes in which not external forces, but your own state is to blame, is called the 'difficult past'. Recognizing one's own responsibility without shifting it to external or internal enemies, time and circumstances is incredibly difficult psychologically, politically and legally. Only at first glance it seems that there are many examples of such...

But no battle is won alone, and before the Reds may rise as one, Mare must side with the boy who broke her heart in order to defeat the boy who almost broke her. Cal’s powerful Silver allies, alongside Mare and the Scarlet Guard, prove a formidable force. But Maven is driven by an obsession so deep, he will stop at nothing to have Mare as his own again, even if it means demolish everything -...

Here the first three books of Paustovsky’s epic autobiography - long unavailable in English - appear in a splendid new translation by Douglas Smith. Taking the reader from Paustovsky’s Ukrainian youth, his family struggling on the verge of collapse, through the first stirrings of writerly ambition, to his experiences working as a paramedic on the front lines of World War I and then as a...

When Maxim Kammerer, a young space explorer from twenty-second-century Earth, crash-lands on an uncharted world, he thinks of himself as a latter-day Robinson Crusoe. Eager to establish first contact with the planet's humanlike inhabitants, he finds himself increasingly entangled in their primitive way of life. After his experiences in their nightmarish military, criminal justice, and mental...

One of the most significant East German writers, Brigitte Reimann (1933-1973) wrote irreverent, autobiographical works that addressed issues and sensibilities otherwise repressed in the GDR. Outspoken and idealistic, she wrote in her diaries that she would rather 'live 30 wild years instead of 70 well-behaved ones.' Considered a master of socialist realism, she heeded the state's call for...

Ukraine is a country caught in a political tug of war: looking East to Russia and West to the European Union, this pivotal nation has long been a pawn in a global ideological game. And since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 in response to the Ukrainian Euromaidan protests against oligarchical corruption, the game has become one of life and death.

In this remarkable book, Karl Schlogel unravels the interconnected histories of two of the world's most celebrated perfumes. In tsarist Russia, two French perfumers – Ernest Beaux and Auguste Michel – developed related fragrances honouring Catherine the Great for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. During the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Beaux fled Russia and took the formula...

The book, initiated by the Yegor Gaidar Foundation, presents 14 large-scale interviews with political figures who, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, became the first leaders of the newly independent states. Askar Akaev, Leonid Kravchuk, Vytautas Landsbergis, Stanislav Shushkevich, Mircea Snegur, Gennady Burbulis, Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Arnold Ruutel, Ivar Godmanis, Isa Gambar, Tengiz...

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...

The Seventh Cross is one of the most powerful, popular, and influential novels of the twentieth century, a hair raising thriller that helped to alert the world to the grim realities of Nazi Germany and that is no less exciting today than when it was first published in 1942. Seven political prisoners escape from a Nazi prison camp; in response, the camp commandant has seven trees harshly pruned...

For some reason, dad left on a business trip at night, and a few days later mom and younger brother disappeared without a trace, and Shurka and Tanya were left alone. 'The raven took it away' - everyone around whispers. But what is this Raven and who will show the way to the road? The border between the city of Crow and an ordinary city is easier to cross than an easy one - but only one way....