Als »ein Volksstück und die Parodie dazu« bezeichnete Alfred Polgar Ödön von Horváths Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald. Mit dem Kleist-Preis ausgezeichnet, wurde Horváths Volksstück 1931 an Max Reinhardts Deutschem Theater in Berlin unter der Regie von Heinz Hilpert uraufgeführt, »das bitterste, das bitterböseste Stück neuer Literatur«, wie Kurt Pinthus schrieb. In der New York Times war zu...

Dina Rubina’s book ‘White Horses’ is the second volume of the trilogy ‘Napoleonic convoy’. If ‘The Rowan Wedge’ - the first book of the series - was the beginning of the action, from which we learned about the origin of the love of two heroes - Aristarchus and Nadezhda, modern Orpheus and Eurydice, then ‘White Horses’ is the culmination in the development of their relationship.

‘Angel's Horn’ is the third and final part of Dina Rubina's saga ‘Napoleon's convoy.’ Aristarchus and Nadezhda, who fell into love of such strength that not everyone could bear it, were scattered by fate in different directions. Both she and he had to to go their own - separate from each other - paths: risky, dangerous. And finally, the meeting took place, 25 years lived apart, proved that...

Akram Aylisli is a classic of modern Azerbaijani literature. What is this book about, which includes selected stories, the famous trilogy ‘Men and Trees’ and the novel ‘Stone Dreams’? One thinks that it is about ‘the creation of a wonderful country, which is irrevocably part of our common experience,’ and that ‘the fairy tale that soared above the earth never took root on the earth’ (L. Anninsky).

Growing up in New York, brothers Emil and Brighton always idolized the Spell Walkers—a vigilante group sworn to rid the world of specters. While the Spell Walkers and other celestials are born with powers, specters take them, violently stealing the essence of endangered magical creatures.

Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.

Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos—an unforgettably compelling masterpiece—tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans....

Set against the doomed splendour of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Radetzky March tells the story of the celebrated Trotta family, tracing their rise and fall over three generations. Theirs is a sweeping history of heroism and duty, desire and compromise, tragedy and heartbreak, a story that lasts until the darkening eve of World War One, when all is set to fall apart. Rich, epic and...

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin...

This book is the funniest (though not always the most fun) book of the last decade. The amazing lightness of the ironic style and the combination of sarcasm with nostalgia made 'Legends of Nevsky Prospekt' a truly national bestseller. Incredible stories from our recent past, told by the master, are increasingly perceived not as the writer's fantasies, but as if turning into a reality known to...

John Steinbeck's cult novel The Grapes of Wrath was first published in America in 1939, received the Pulitzer Prize, and the author himself was later awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. To date, Grapes of Anger are included in many of the curricula of schools and colleges in the United States. During the Great Depression, a family of ruined farmers is forced to leave their home in Oklahoma....

Sergei Dovlatov was born in an evacuation and died in exile. As a writer, he formed in Leningrad, but success came to him in America, where he lived since 1979. His artistic thought with apparent paradoxicality, grounded in life experience, is simple and noble: to tell how strangely people live - then sadly laughing, then ridiculously sad. There are no righteous people in his books, because...