In this issue: Maria Arbatova ‘Equation with Two Knowns’, ‘My Teachers’, Nina Gabrielyan ‘the Lilac Dressing Gown’, Dina Rubina ‘On Upper Maslovka’, Irina Muravyova ‘In Kroporkinskaya Street’, ‘The Forgotten Woman’, Irina Polianskaya ‘The Pure Zone’, Liudmila Petrushevskaya ‘Fairy Tales for Grownup Children’, Larissa Miller ‘Springrime in Vroad Daylight’, poems.

The prose Prisoner No. 1260 was written by Jaromír Šavrda between September and November 1982 during his second imprisonment in Ostrava (1982-84). In the book, he describes the conditions in communist criminals, but also the various fates of muggles or absurd stories that could only be experienced in a country where party idiots ruled together with the secret police. The book was first...

The Rosy Crucifixion: Sexus. Plexus. Nexus. Three books under one cover. Sexus is the first volume of a series called The Rosy Crucifixion, in which Miller completes his major life work. It was written in the United States during World War II, and first published in Paris in 1949. Of this remarkable project, Lawrence Durrell has said: ‘The completion of his seven-volume autobiography, if it...

M. Zoshchenko is one of the largest Russian writers of the 20th century, whose work goes beyond the satirical genre. This book presents Zoshchenko the comedian, Zoshchenko the philosopher, Zoshchenko the continuer of the classical traditions of Russian prose. The Blue Book is ironic and, together with the lyrical look at the history of human relations. The text of The Blue Book is published...

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.

The Good Soldier Schweik is the story beginning in Prague with news of the assassination in Sarajevo that precipitates World War I. Schweik displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no one can decide whether he is merely an imbecile or is craftily undermining the war effort. However, he is arrested by a member of the secret police after making some...

Hurricane Katrina ravaged the states of Louisiana and Mississippi in August 2005. Thus, he left behind not only material losses. Ruined homes or cemeteries washed out by great water are just some of their examples. He also left a trauma in the psyche of the people who survived him. A girl from Poland comes to a town hit by a hurricane. She runs away from difficult experiences, but no idyll...

Eighteen-year-old Izzy O’Neill knows exactly who she is—a loyal friend, an aspiring comedian, and a person who believes that milk shakes and Reese’s peanut butter cups are major food groups. But after she’s caught in a compromising position with the son of a politician, it seems like everyone around her is eager to give her a new label: slut.Izzy is certain that the whole thing will blow over...

The town of Tarusa lies 101 kilometers outside Moscow, far enough to have served, under Soviet rule, as a place where former political prisoners and other 'undesirables' could legally settle. Lying between the center of power and the provinces, between the modern urban capital and the countryside, Tarusa is the perfect place from which to observe a Russia that, in Maxim Osipov's words, 'changes...